Tempus, and how it fugits

[grumpy_thomas]

Time passes, each and every human knows this, and to each it passes at a different rate, to some it must see, barely to move at all, to others, eternity is condensed into a moment. lives lived at such a rate that all is always new

Comments

[grumpy_thomas]

To address your points in semi-reverse order... I live with three other people in Brighton, but they are strangers, before that there were three other strangers, before that I lived in a hostel, which in many ways was nicer. I do not have a degree. I did a year and a half of law, but after the first year, where I discovered alcoholism, and the departure of everyone I knew from, incidentally, Reading University, I spend the latter half of 2004 perfecting alcoholism, but also reading, which I don't seem to do any more... Left in January 2005. I am somewhat scared that now I live with students, one of whom I spoke to for some time recently, and was asked variously whether pandas were extinct, whether dinosaurs ever existed and if they coexisted with humans, whether pandas ate baboons or bamboo, what out of Africa Theory was, and other disturbing questions. I'm not an elitist, but I've never really talked to someone who didn't know this kind of thing. At least I've never noticed. Perhaps I've just never known whom to talk to. I'm just shocked by such ignorance, but she seems happy...
I've often assumed happiness and ignorance go together, she is doing a degree, I just do not understand things sometimes. It is strange.

I wash up, that's my function. A poor function it is, and it makes slightly more than the minimum wage. About 20p per hour more, and of course it's boring, but what else is there? I drink three litres of vodka a week, I hardly speak to anyone. I don't really have friends. I like to write with an injection of humour because I need to live with humour. If I couldn't mock things I would have killed myself long ago. Drink and cynicism keep me alive. Which is ironic in and of itself.

Jesus Christ... I'm not worth existence

[petulant_jane]

ah, see in my books living not-with-your-family counts as living 'alone' since it constitutes living entirely on your own means. Financially I do this anyway. as does my family. on my means, that is. I am also more than capabale of doing things for myself, shopping, hoovering, washing up etc, not to mention for my family. so in fact, in my life as described so far, I pay to wash up. To some extent this is true, but ultimately what I'm paying for is not having to live on my own means emotionally or socially. I will probably quite literally only leave here over my mother's cold dead body because between one thing and another over the last decade my suspiscion that I am the kind of monster that only a mother could consistently love has petrified along with my stone cold heart. so, like, my heart is like a fossil of my own self-loathing yeah? that is like such a deep simile. Or possibly metaphor. Depends how you interpret the second 'like'. In any case, by extension of my extreme disdain for my own failure to leave home I respect all those who have done so. Having met some alarmingly ignorant graduates myself however, I do not feel the same way about having a degree. I did attempt university though; Classics at Royal Holloway. Lasted a single term before I got ill and decided never to go back* .
Now I have a job with a fantastic wage considering my lack of qualifications but a wage nonetheless, while my friends go even further afield in pursuit of salaries. My hours however are fairly few and as of today to be spent at a company pc newly installed in my room.

I am losing my ability to concentrate cos I forgot to have lunch, but hey, as far as value is concerned, you're just setting your standards too high. The hair products on TV tell us that at most we should aspire to be worth 'it'. Eva Longoria-Parker doesn't need the extra e-x-s-e-n-c-e and neither do you! :)

* If you've not been to Egham yet I recommend (if the name hasn't done so already) that you you leave it that way. For me, not-going to Egham is a positive life experience in itself. I imagine the state of never-having-been-to-Egham to be something approaching Nirvana. However, not to challenge the aphorism that ignorance is bliss, had I never been to Egham I should never know how happy I might have been never to have been to Egham...so in fact it is impossible to say who is happier in real terms - those innocents who have guilelessly avoided the horrors of that place but consequently cannot appreciate their luck therein, or we unfortunates who have suffered there but consequently can find joy in the simple act of not being there. Tricky, but that's alright, I like paradoxes. What I don't like is Egham.

[grumpy_thomas]

It's been so long since my parents were together I can't remember what it was like, argumentative I think. I can't stand living with my mother now, more than an hour or two is enough to drive me insane. Lived with her for a while, she was drunk during the day, I was drunk during the night. I had to lock my wine up in the morning. Don't cope well with her being around. Can't stand to live with family. For so long I saw no way out, then accident happened, I ended up living in a hostel for four months in a room with three other people, only half of whom were really psychotic, now live in a dodgy landlord house. Bit like Alexei Sayle from The Young Ones, but less intelligible. And Turkish.

'
I am losing my ability to concentrate cos I forgot to have lunch, but hey, as far as value is concerned, you're just setting your standards too high. The hair products on TV tell us that at most we should aspire to be worth 'it'. Eva Longoria-Parker doesn't need the extra e-x-s-e-n-c-e and neither do you! :)'

I can't really work out what that refers to... My life is worthless. Just a series of calculations allowing day to day existence while destroying the future. I should not have been born

[petulant_jane]

haha, your life chez maman has echoes of mine. I haven't succumbed to alcoholism yet but there are several family precedents and I've learnt the hard way never to say never when it comes to my own life-destroying foibles. Suffice to say I have a well-hidden stash if I ever do lean in that direction, and the rest is a little depressing for a monday morning but still apparently insufficient impetus to fly the nest for the time being. Harrumble for getting it together before the drink-driven onset of premature dementia!

I'd forgotten you were a bleak expectations fan - one gets used to being anomolous in having listened to almost anything on radio 4. Agree with your latest post, although for me the last episode provided the least laughter so far, but then I was sorting out the chaos that was my room at the time which tends to be a damper to hilarity so harrumble for simply not being foetal and weeping in the midst of a sea of impulse-buys and paperwork.

Oh, and my spiel about the adequacy of being worth 'it' as opposed to the longer 'existence' was a weak attempt at some kind of cod reassurance because as the product of a particularly neurotic girl's grammar I simply cannot let other people's self deprication pass unchallengled, nor can I (either logically or within the bounds of social propriety) presume to assess the genuine value of someone I bareley know. Solution: bypass all interpersonal communication by focusssing on the words themselves and remaining studiously blinkered to their meaning.
Since the phrase 'worth existence' contains the l'oreal catchphrase 'worth it' I decided to reference its endorsement by the first celebrity shampooee who came to mind as 'evidence' that you needn't be worth the entirity of 'existence' anyway. It was that or actually have to understand you and consequently potentially concur if only on the grounds that arguably no life has any ultimate value. Frankly I don't see how even religion could change that. If your purpose in life is suddenly to please Him*, but should you fail He*'ll make sure to tuck you away in Hell or Limbo or Purgatory or one of those other places He* doesn't have to deal with you, how does that make you feel more valuable? Even supposing pleasing God could be said to be important He pretty much ignores anyone who doesn't - not much smiting going on these days so clearly He's not taking it personally anymore, but even if He was at the end of the day what's it matter to me if my wasted life makes God cry - If He cares so much about us down here then who's He, as mister omniscient and omnipotent, to lecture me about wasted potential or social responsibility?

Bugger. so close to conciseness and then I had to think about God. Still, in light of your low self-esteem, here's hoping you deem your time as worthless as I do my own and my wasting it a consequently minor offence :)

*/Her/It/Them; /She/It/They; /Her/Its/Their; ad nauseam and al fine.