Tuesday 21 October 2008

Scenes In Shadow

Underneath the shadows
Where the moonlight cannot reach
So softly she is creeping
Forgetting oft to breath.

Far beneath the cloudless sky
Where nighttime shadows play
She steals a path unfettered
Her one and only way.

As the night unfolds it's pillow
Against a grainy sky
She wallows in the sorrow
But she will never cry.

Pale morning finally beckons
And moonlight fades away
She will be here no longer
Tho' in my heart she'll always stay.

Originally written: April 2007

Tuesday 14 October 2008

Cheer Up! It Might Never Happen

(Memoirs Of A Miserable Childhood)
Advice To The Under 30s

If anyone tries to tell you that school days are the happiest time of your life, not only are they lying to you but they probably deserve your deepest sympathy.

Imagine being at your happiest at school, which is roughly from 5 to 17 years of age - twelve years at most of your whole life, wallowing in bliss only to spend the next 53 or so years (assuming it'll all end around 70) being miserable and wishing you were still at school! Sad, or what!

Let's put this foolish notion into perspective. Yes, at school you do not have to drag your sorry self into an over air-conditioned office to give the impression of doing a job that you hate almost every single day for the rest of your sorry life. You do not have to appear respectful and answer to the meanest most pig-headed, self absorbed, self-appointed, uneducated manager in the world. This is true.

But on the other hand you have to go to school almost every single day, learn pointless things like algebra and the names of some dead and long buried King's seventy-two wives. You have to show respect to that pig-headed, self absorbed, self appointed, uneducated teacher who makes you sit still in class when you'd rather be chasing girls/boys in the playground and generously showers you with impossible amounts of homework and constant public criticism to boot.

It's true that as a school kid, you do not have the responsibility of earning a living and chances are someone out there is probably providing you with a roof over your head and hopefully at least a couple meals a day. But the chances are also high that through most of these heady school days you cannot stand the sight of this all-giving person (or persons) because they just don't understand you and will insist on shouting at you several times every torturously long day, expecting you to do the dreariest most unimportant tasks immediately when the last thing you want is to be disturbed from the vitally important business of navel-gazing.

"Come down NOW! Your dinner is on the table!"
"Turn off the TV NOW and get on with your homework!"

There is no doubt these persons are getting a kick from deliberately making your life miserable.

"No! You can't go to Charlie's party - someone has to look after your sister/brother!"
"Have you tidied your bedroom yet?"
"What are you doing in there?" and so on and on and on.

Plus, you mainly have to eat what you're given and there is little sympathy for your delicate and ever changing palette even when you experience a spiritual epiphany watching TV secretly one day in your blacked out bedroom and become unable to stomach meat and dairy for almost a whole month! Agh, it's so unfair!

My advice, dear youthful reader, is to stop striving in agonising vain to make your school days the fabled 'best days of your life'. Just get through them as best as you can and hope that there are better times to come. If handled correctly, school days can see you in good stead for the real fun part of your life - adulthood. But they will amount to the steepest learning curve you will ever experience.

This will not seem like good news (because it isn't) but whether you feel as though you are courageously climbing up or constantly slipping down the curve of essential learning, there will be no poles capable of sustaining you satisfactorily. You will fall. You will break a limb or two. Hopefully you'll break a heart or two, including your own. Life will be generally difficult and fraught with all kinds of danger.

But, and this is your only salvation, so grab a hold and hold fast: the pain of being young will end, eventually. Though it may take an inordinately long time full of tears, tantrums and traumas, you will finally reach a plateau, approximately somewhere between 18 and 25 years, when you can look back at your school days and think

"Well, thank God they're over and I'm still alive!"

If your school days are long past but you insist on harbouring feelings of failure for not having had the most super splendid time at school or think that you must be the only one of your friends/peer group that did not excel at being a carefree, positive-experience-absorbing, negative-experience-shrugger-off-er of a child, put those thoughts and painful memories behind you and move on. You made it to here didn't you? The future is now and the past my friend, is just that.

With a huge portion of patience, foresight, tolerance, good observational skills and the regular company of those who actually do know better (rather than the majority who simply think they know better), it may be possible to get through childhood relatively unscathed. However, if you can collect at least a few scars along the way, you'll know that it has been worthwhile and you will have something to look back on in admiration for making it through to the wonderful world of being 20 something and almost grown-up.

Then there is simply the matter of your pre-30 days to get through, attempting to put all you've learned into practice, re-learning the algebra and history you didn't pay attention to at school, discovering that there's so much more useful stuff that can only be learned through experience, finding your own way and carving your own space in the world. But don't worry about these years, if you've put in the hard graft already, compared to being at school, they'll be a breeze, trust me!