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[Mar. 7th, 2008|11:18 pm] |
I.
This will be my last chance to post as a seventeen year old.
I must admit that that's a strange thought, it feels like a lot longer than a year {even a Leap Year} since I turned this age and for it to be finally at an end is rather disconcerting. Not entirely unwelcome, of course, there are things which are pleasing about it, but still somewhat unsettling.
The legal system is a funny thing over here and, as ever, its impact upon cultural matters is considerable. You are allowed to have sex at sixteen but not rent out videos of doing so until eighteen. I've often remarked upon how odd this is, not as odd as the Americans letting you serve and die in combat at sixteen yet not have a drink until twenty-one {which is positively unjust} but still downright odd.
But now that's all becoming academic, as if it wasn't anyway, and tomorrow {only thirty three minute away now} I'll be able to drink and vote and fill in the gaps of my official adolescence. I'll be a "Proper adult", in the eyes of the law a man.
Really though, that's all a load of bullshit anyway and the idea of a transition of moments bearing such a great amount of meaning utter and absolute nonsense based around the necessity of any so arbitrary a system but...Still. Only a fool disregards symbols, for they are "Only" powerful within the human mind but that is the only place that ever matters. At the risk of descending into the very dregs of pretentiousness the fact that everything is nothing except that which is relative to the observer makes the mind all that matters. Without it there would be no scale, no perception at all. If it is perceived it is of importance, at least to some degree.
II.
Manhood.
It strikes me that we are a rare culture in our seeming lack of any ceremony, any ritual or rite, that distinguished the y-
Oh fuck it.
This is all nonsense anyway, I'm not going to talk anthropology here. Not now. It probably is notable, and so on. It does distinguish us. Perhaps it is something which we lack rather than that which others could do without. But it's not interesting.
I don't really care.
III.
It seems like the overwhelming deluge has diminished to a scanty trickle.
I had expected as many as seven to attend my party but it seems that instead the figure shall amount to two. As such my concern has shifted from how to entertain the throng and reconcile so large and diverse a crowd, how best to divide my attention, to how to evade the pair that are still arriving detecting just how sparse my arrangements are.
My mother, of course, has arranged a vast feast's worth of food, now all seeming sadly excessive, somehow forlorn. I, however, have prepared nothing. Perhaps my being ill the past two days has not assisted this but if I'm honest that is a poor excuse and nothing more. I would never have orchestrated anything as I have no inspiration. I have no clue what to do under such conditions and now that they have shifted I remain devoid of any ideas as to how to entertain.
The two who I am left with differ greatly. Perhaps of all my friends the contrast could not be grander. This I will not speak of explicitly here but it suffices to say that the one of my close friends who is most unforgiving and firm shall be coupled with the weakest and least appropriate that could be confined in that narrow bracket of "guest".
I am weary of the prospect already. We have nothing to do.
IV.
My sickness seems to have eased, today.
I suspect that I shall be well for my birthday tomorrow, or at least I have hopes. I was fairly well for most of today but the coarse throat that I enjoyed yesterday {as if crushed glass had lined the air I breathed while I slept} had returned, albeit with reduced force.
Yesterday, though, was worse. In addition to feeling weak and aching over my entire body {around the testicles especially} I spent an hour or so in a delirium, writhing and chanting to myself, before conducting a song entitled "Use your lungs" where I implored a love, quite possibly dead, to start breathing after all the struggles we had been through together. After this I returned to reciting mangled mantras over and over, none of which I can remember.
Today though, there was none of that.
I seem to have little or no appetite. Most likely as a consequence of being bedbound. I have gotten more sleep in these past two days than I have done in the rest of this month, but then it's early days. Perhaps this shall form a pattern, I hope not.
It seems that Douglas and Ben are similarly afflicted. The latter is being prevented from attendance, it would seem, but even if the former recovered there would be a cancellation of some prior engagement required before he could attend. Another, the wench met at Wireless, has a vast amount of English Coursework I encouraged her to do earlier to finish for Monday while Oli has been proscribed by his parents from leaving the house after some "Bad" mock results. I find this curious but it seems to be the way with his household. Understandable but still a pity.
Perhaps, it occurs to me, James is truly all I need. After all, it is impossible to lure him from his abode for any other cause. He is bound to his residence in a fashion that defies both my efforts to extricate him and his former school's. Our former school's.
Perhaps I should not speak of him here. But I know that I shall be glad to have him as a guest, for once, even if I can not entertain.
V.
There could be more, if I conjured it, but now I must bathe. It would not do to enter adulthood filthy, as although you should enter things as you intend to continue them there is also much to be said for leaving room for degeneration. |
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