*Ode to an acyl group's passing*

I was bored, with you: we were joined with two planks at the hip.
You could not let me go: you yourself, of course, were frisky,
But I, really, I had no-one.
I thought I didn't have you.
So when HE came along, with his other-nature,
His enchanting negativity, which drew me to him,
I strayed.
I let go of you, with one hand, no longer held you tight,
I joined with him.

Then, as soon as I had loosed my grip,
I realized what I had done.
I wanted you!
I needed you.
Now, though, you too held a negative pall.
But not for long.
You found, anew, a positive spin.
A new beginning.

We are still, in truth, connected, but not by much more.
What was special is gone.

I turn to drink.

WW1

Anna's just returned from the High Storrs WW1 Battlefields tour, which I went on two years ago as well. Afterwards we had to do some kind of creative project based on experience: I wrote a poem which I thought I'd post for nostalgia purposes. I wrote this after seeing one of the German cemeteries in that area of Belgium: unlike the French/British/Commonwealth ones, it's not as grandiose- many were built in the retreat from the front, and there's not as much funding and effort that goes to maintain them- rather somber affairs.

Entropy
My body lies, dead, with my countrymen, my friends, my brothers-in-arms
Above me, lies a headstone; it declares me “unknown”- I beg to differ:
For I know me; though, my name? Forgotten by mortal ears, remembered only by another stone
Carved to record and remember,
Carved by hands which themselves are dead; dead then, or dead now;
For time is not the great healer but the great destroyer

Those who buried us are dead, and those who buried them will be dead before I have been dead twice over
When dead, a different perspective reveals itself
Time does not concern. Patriotism and vigour forgotten- though we had neither of much toward the end
The order came to make a stand, to fight and so we did
Oh how we fought. Until the bitter end. And bitter it was. We span in our graves,
For the injustice of it.

I lie here, with my fellow countrymen
And our dead cheeks weep unseen tears. Betrayed? Betrayal from no-one. No-one but God.
What had we done to deserve this? We fought because we had to:
For glory; for the sun.
That sun seems so far away now

I lie, in this decaying place, uncared for now, small efforts holding back the inevitable tide of ruin
Death comes to all. Leave me to it. That and my grave, it's all I have
I have no name that I can call my own. Merely an inscription. Generic in it's sympathy
It reads “Unbekannter Soldat”. What name I had once has fallen

Who was I? Ha
“Johann Schmidt”. And if you believe that, I swear, you'll believe anything.
Leave me. Go and decay as all do
There is no optimism in a graveyard
Not for us
Not for you
Not for anyone
We just know it better than the rest.

Ping.

So, what's been happening in my life? How's stuff going? Well:

A-Levels are going nicely: first set of results in a week and I hope hope hope that I've got the A grades that I worked for. It's what I'm predicted and I what I can achieve so I hope I've done it. I'm really enjoying my subjects at the moment, especially Maths and Chemistry. Chemistry because, well, while in many ways it all seems like poetic nonsense it's actually quite fun and logical, and as such it's engaging. Physics I've also been enjoying, but we've been doing waves which isn't that fun a topic really, although it's an essential one. Maths... that's really good. Loving C3 and M2, C2 is okay but Ms Hemingway manages to make it a little tedious. Still, I'm enoying it all-round. As well, I've been reading up and away on what's to come in Maths and I must say it's very exciting. I love studying the subject.

In terms of universities I'm just begining to consider this. I'm fairly sure I want to go and do Maths but exactly where and what kind of course (single, dual honors) I want to go for I am still undecided on. Still, a while yet to think about it.

I think the most exciting thing that's happened has been the play that we recently finished and performed with Fruit Bowl. Fruit Bowl as a group has been really great, helping to normalize and make me comfortable with my sexuality, which I really now regard as so. The play has been fascinating for this: the development, the mish-mash of different ideas and experience to create coherent characters with narratives we care about... and also, an exploration of what it actually means to be a young LGBTQ person in today's society. Cool stuff! In many ways it's hard to actually get across to straight people how fundamentally odd it feels sometimes. We live in a heteronormative society; adverts, movies, cards, newspapers, cartoons, almost every form of media assumes that romance occurs between a man and a woman. Of course "gay media" exists, but the point is that wider society, unless you tell them otherwise, thinks of you as straight by default. This should not, I think, be an assumption you should make.

All this thinking about LGBTQ teens brought me to thinking about Silverdale. Now, as I think is common in many schools, the LGBTQ population is invisible; they surely exist, I cannot be the only gay person in the school- but I am certainly unaware of any. Now, it may be because I don't talk to people in other that I don't hear about this there, and I don't talk to enough people to know teh Y12 social groups well. Nevertheless, I think it's a shame that it's not something widely discussed, because, (and this is important), if someone who is uncertain or questioning their sexuality sees regularly those of differing sexualities integrating well and openly, it wil be easier for them to come to terms with their own. This is why I make a point of telling people about mine when they ask: because it's always better to be open, not just for yourself but for others.

So yeah. Other things that have happened recently: beginning planning for my 17th birthdya party, will, God-willing, be a LAN party with TGW + n3hima present. Fun!

New Year's Resolutions + Rationales

I won't lie: I got this idea wholesale from Sean. But then he didn't invent it. So pah! Let's go!

1. Write More
I know I know I know it is a cliche and a half but once upon a time I loved writing and did it a lot more. Finding it harder and harder nowadays and my creativity in general is drying up; lack of stimulation. Wish there was some kind of writing group or something @ Silverdale but alas no. Just have to do this on my own. New Moleskine should help with this, because although I always get a ton and a half of notebooks I've actually used this one (albeit for revision notes) and I love it, I really do.

2. Find a Future
ATM I hardly have any dea what I'm doing with my life. A-Levels yes but then afterwards? University almost certainly, I'll probably try (and fail) to get into Oxbridge (one of the two); but then I don't even know why I'd be doing that. I'm torn in many ways by my kind of academic, thirsting for knowledge side and my more eccentric, "social" side, who wants to explore the world on emotional not intellectual terms. So I think I want to consolidate the wide open space ahead of em a bit more, or at least map it out.

3. Socialize Out of School More
This is I suppose mildly related; I feel intensely lonely at home, sometimes to a fault; while I do do stuff out of school: Exalted, Woodcraft; I feel as if almost my entire life is based at school and therefore begins at 9AM and ends at 3:20PM. Weekends are... ugh. I am an incredibly, incredibly social person; I hate to be alone; I love talking with people about stuff, having a dialog; one reason why I enjoy debating is because it gives this opportunity to engage with others, and about something which less trivial; not that I don't enjoy the trivial things. I've talked before about feeling unconnected with people and I suppose that feelings is the place from which this resolution has come.

4. Re-Improve Manners
I feel like a very rude person sometimes; apparently I eat improperly, I feel like I interrupt people all the time, and am generally thoughtless. I used too be less so, and I think this is something which I would like to re-aquire, this skill of politeness; it is an absoloutely important one. I get veyr fustrated with myself, again I suppose I care too much about what others think but I just think that making a good impression on people and being seen as a polite person makes them feel respected and allows them to treat you with more respect. hence this resoloution.

5. Learn how to Deal with Unforeseen Circumstances
I have GOT to get better at this; I cannot adapt well to a new situation at all and I can get sometimes quite upset when things change suddenly. I have to learn to adapt to current situations rather than trying to impose old ideas on a changed one. Greater fluidity in my attitudes will help me immensely not only in schoolwork but in life in general; especially in the past year I have learnt how events which are not part of the plan can come along; you either change of your own volition or are forced to; I need to learn to choose the former.

6. See a Picture Right in Size
This one might need some explaining; what it means is that I need to stop getting obsessed with minuatae and small details, and sometimes look at the big picture and see how some stuff doesn't really matter that much. But equally I must be careful not to have Total Perspective and see the world for what it is; see the massive universe and feel totally insignificant; in other words I should learn to have just the right amount of perspective and see the world on the wider human level. Too often I get upset over the small stuff or get depressed because of how large the world truly is.

7. Gain Weight
This one's pretty simple; I'm underweight atm and so I need to gain some weight to become comfortably healthy. Eating better stuff and excersing more will also helps shift the existing weight so that I'm not so weedy; my lack of ability to carry anything heavy is quite embrassing at times. But the main thing is to put some weight on with a healthier diet.

So there we go! Quite a good list. Please comment if you see this and have thoughts, or anything. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say.

Winter cometh.

Hmm. Winter is rolling in fast, and right on cue my seasonal introspection is rolling in. There's something about this time of year; the death of the last world and the beginning of the new, to invoke the ancients, which instills within me a certain feeling. In some ways, I feel less alone this time of year- the world is cold and dying, in Britain at least, but we're together. Summer... it's all too true that the loneliest place in the world is in the middle of crowds. At this time of year, it's easier to remember everyone's a person.

I like to revel in insignificance, to gaze up at the skies and to look at things like the APOD... how could anyone ever think we matter in any way. We're fleshly shells of carbon compounds eking out existence on a cold rock dangerously flung round a nuclear furnace, one of many millions of rocks out there in the cold dark universe. And that's /beautiful/.

As of late I'm finding it easier to relate to people, not just to talk to them but to have conversations with them. In some ways, it's sad that the one thing I cannot do- healthily interact with people- is the one thing I want to do the most, but maybe it's not so weird. Things like maths, sciences, the acedemiac things that makes up most of my existence... I've always done them. And they're great. But I could never truly belive in them totally for their own sakes, because I am human and we are a social ape. The trouble is, the worst part of life is the impermeable barrier between /you/ and /the rest/. You can never join minds as one, you are stuck behind your own plastic interpretation of the world, a PVC prison, clear as day but as tactile as a sheet of lead. It's horrible to think that I will never get someone else to see the world as I see it; I can try my utmost, but to know me is not to be me. And so I feel alone. And so we, as a species, feel alone. We try out utmost not to be... but I fear we are.

I wonder, sometimes, about people, and how we classify the relationships between us. I was privy to a frankly ridiculous conversation about the distinctions between "friends with benefits", "going out", "seeing each other", "dating" et al on Friday. I, quite literally, facepalmed. This obsession with nomenclature is a predominant attitude amoung, well, everything humanity does. But it's especially obvious in how we define our interactions with each other. Look, for instance, at the gay marriage row over in California. I've talked with people, sane people, who are absoloutely fine with gay marriage rights, as long as it's noit called "marriage". They've said, clear as day, that if the difference is in name only then that's fine, but if they are identical in everything this is wrong. Shakespeare, where are you now; tell us again of roses and of their natures.

Should people be discouraged from this endless naming? No, it gives them something to do, I suppose. But it seems bizarre... in any sane world, there would be clear cut definitions of everything and that would be fine. Haha! I've just realized- I'm falling into the same trap. For why are definitions necessary at all; why can they not just fall by the way said? Surely it is the doing, not the being, which is more important? Why does everything need metadata? I echo here a sentiment of Terry Pratchetts, that 9/10 of the universe is undetectable because it is doing the paperwork for the other 1/10. We ascribe so much to everything, we create this panoply of things and meanings around it all, we create stories for the world, stories like "fairness" and "equality" and "rights" and "love" and "freedom" and we call it being human. And it is wonderful. This, then, is the point to all the nomenclature: it's just another search for meaning, by creating it out of whole cloth.

I think the problem is, once you've seen this, once you realise what you're doing at look directly at the metadata of the universe, it all seems like so much spidersilk. I always feel like an outsider, because that's what I am, a misfit. The trip outside is one-way, the brightness outside the cave overwhelming yet freeing, and yet sometimes I wish I could re-chain my mind. To not think like this, to not over-analyze my analysis of anything, recursion after recursion after recursion... it would be good. To be able to love and lose and not care, and not notice, and just be... yeah. I'd like that. But then, I fear, I wouldn't be me. I'd be someone totally different in every way. And nobody wants that... well, probably not.

TL;DR version of this post: wintertime gives me extreme introspection and I am silly about it.

If you managed to get all through all that and didn't hang yourself or go off to do something rather more /fun/, well done. Leave a comment or something; it'd be nice to know the plastic barriers aren't that thick.

Ponderings.

Lately I have been considering sex and sexuality (sounds like a lost Jane Austen novel): namely, the pervasive attitudes to these things, especially within teenagers and my age group.

Theoretically, I am "out of the closet" about being gay: however, I don't think I've even mentioned it to anyone in my entire school career so far. Why is this? I don't fear bullying, which probably would occur, because I don't need to care about anyone retarded enough to tease someone about that. While that'd be a worry, it's not my main reason.

I think the main reason is the general taboo on talk of sex and environs in conversation. You cannot bring it up: if it does come up, it rarely lasts long in a conversation. There seems a sad state of things when the topic of the weather can provoke a conversation of greater depth and thought than a conversation about sex and sexuality, which is really quite an important one.

Let's get one thing straight. Sex is not odd, base, perverse, strange, in any real way (special cases may appear so, but these are exceptions). It's a normal human activity, in many ways: of course, like any activity, there are those who do not engage in it, by choice or by genetics. But even then there is still a topic of conversation: atheism is something which you can discuss just as much as you can theism: so to asexuality.

Human sexuality is fascinating. It is so hard to pin down in any one way, that inevitably whenever a way is found people rush to it e.g. gender preference. For sexuality is not just what attracts you and how much. It is an entire geography of things, and it is nigh-impossible to pidgeonhole in any way.

Why can this not be discussed? Why is this not a topic for debate? (Perhaps not formal debate, heh, but I mean in a more general sense). What, really, is funny about the word penis? Peeeeeenis. Penis. Paninay. Vayjayjay. These are words with normal meanings and yet even typing them I get little taboo bells in my head. Why? What is this aversion to sexuality as a topic of public discussion? Between friends, perhaps, whispered things in little ways: and indeed for personal and specific things, this is probably best. But in a more general case why is a more general conversational approach not valid?

What it comes down to, I suppose, is me wondering why we seems to have an inbuilt approach at avoiding the subject, a aversion I share: I would find it hard to express all these words in public. At the most, I'd still be giggling at the word vajayjay. It's interesting that this aversion exists, and I wonder on the reason for it.

On a related but more bloggy note, October 11th is National Coming Out Day: I hope to get hold of a little rainbow wristbandy thing before this time, because really, if I cannot bring up the courage to apply the general case then, when can I?

Off subject completely, am very annoyed at my lack of Exalted: Friendly Local Book Shoppe, you have failed me! This is why you don't order gaming books from anything other than FLGS and Amazon: because most people have no idea what a gaing book is, let alone how to get one. Luckily next Wednesday is only chargenning so I don't need my book: dammit, it would have been useful though.

Predictions:

Latin: A/A*
RE: A*/A
Maths: A*
English Literature: A
Biology: A*/A
English Language: A*/A
History: A
Chemistry: A*/A
Physics: A/A*

Actual:

Latin: A
RE: A*
Maths: A*
English Literature: A
Biology: A*
English Language: A*
History: A*
Chemistry: A*
Physics: A*

And iPRO is provisionally passed, but not validated yet.

FUCK YEAH. WOOO!

Can't belive I got A* in History, am still buzzing.

Gotta go.