I'm getting to not sleep again. thought I'd come find this again, don't remember writing that which is below. what does that mean, "I'll see you in heaven," with just the comma and... ?I seriously don't remember writing that. But I like it. You see like, I get embarassed writing. I think alot of people do. Most people do. But I think it's not for a normal reason (or maybe it is, but I'm never going to know, am I).

So like, you read real poetry, and the stuff that you like, that's good, is good. you like it. But every time I read something by teenagers, I think yuck, I think pretentious, I think try-hard, I think vanity and hell you're only 16 and what can you know and don't you know what you're feeling, everyone's feeling, and yet you're elevating it to the level of heart-felt poetry ('poetry') and going on and saying to things, and trying to be clever about things, and trying to understand things, that 100 million other people have already gone through before. Vanity. And also in general, the banality of trying to, you know, to make sense of the world. ridiculous. So what i've got below I like. becuase it doesn't really make sense. And I don't think it's really trying to understand anything in particular. There's a bit of self-expression there for sure, a bit of typical teenage-depressedness which is a little difficult to escape, a little humour, a bit of trying to be clever (but it's not too clever, not so it seems too clever, you know) and a little nonsense which is also simultaniously the kind of 'but is it serious, is there really meaning, significance there' nonsense. It is like, in Hesse's steppenwolf, his Goethe goes "eternity is but an instant, just long enough for a joke". I don't know if that's a real Goethe quote or is Hesse was doing something trickier there, but all the same, it's sort of like that. The world is nonsense. I am nonsense. you are nonsense. And sense can never caputre man, becuase as soon as he realises he is acting sensibly, he will run from it, as Dostoyevsky will explain over and over again to anyone who reads him.

I also wanted to write here that I'm sick of university. Honestly like, it better get better. I feel like I'm growing, developing my mind, my thinking, my consiousness, my being, (my soul?) onwards and outwards, open-wards still, but I'm doing all the work myself. Using my own time to read novels, and wikipedia, and dedicating long tracts of time to thinking, just thinking. I'm building on my understanding, developing everything, coming to comprehend everything on a wider scale and come up with more satisfactory answers (or more appropriate, precise questions) (or coming to appreciate questions and answers can only get you so far) and that's good by me, that's what I've decided I want to be doing for I don't know, I good few more years at least. But then side-by-side to this, taking up so much of my day, are these absolubtlely ludicrous uinversity courses. All we do in English is microscopically break down books into little compartments with fancy greek and french names. why do we want to do that? it's weird. In philosophy all we do is look at one argument, then, look at another one, then say which one is stronger, better. I don't even get it. Nah like, and the arguments are so basic, and simplifed further for us in lectures after we've read them at home, because apparently we won't even be able to take in the whole thing as it stands on it's own (and this is actually true, as a class the average grade is a solid C - good one) but then like, even the whole process. I don't even see how you're meant to decide which is the better argument. I'm not sure how to put it, it's like, for example there's one guy, and he thinks you shouldn't kill animals coz they're like people, and so we should be nice to them. And then there's another guy, and he thinks it's okay to kill animals, coz they're not like people, they're different enough from us, and it's fine. And I mean what does that come down to? It comes down to wether or not animals possess the same qualities that are equivillent to the ones which dicate that we don't kill humans. That comes down to two things though then, or rather many things, namely say for example a definition of animal, of human, of why it is wrong to kill humans, of the qualities each respective party possesses, etc. And do we have an agreed definition for any of these things? why we don't kill people, for example? I don't think so. I mean we can link it to divine command if we wish, or to darwin and evolution, but still there's no concrete sort of set of reasons. Same goes for what a person is, or anything like that. You can see that just in the way that the two people arguing each side dissagree. They have for example different reasons for why we don't kill people. And both are perfectly valid, and of course, coz it's all realtive isn't it, why one person doesn't kill someone is different to why antother doesn't. And so where does that leave you? For me, I'd love to say then, okay, everyone just thinks differently, let's leave it at that, and kill animals if you think you should, or don't if you don't, it's fine. for me that's the sensible place to stop. rather than for exmaple in a 45 minute essay trying to see who has the better account for why we shoudn't kill people. I mean it's been thousands of years of philosophy, no one's ever come up with a reason everyone's happy with, (for the very reason of course, that it's all realtive, to a sufficient degree anyway) I, a 17 year old undergraduate student officially studier of philosophy for 6 and a half weeks aren't going to be able to do it. But that's the task. Granted I don't think it's what's expected of you. You're expected to ignore those big sort of questions, focus on petty details of some sort, which I can never quite identify accurately, becuase I jump straight to what surely are actually the key issues. Those however, you need years, and 10,000s of words to deal with, and so we ignore them entirely (? why? becuase most people would just fail if we tried, so, we don't?) and you'd have to go do a Ph.D if you want to get rewarded for thinking about them in any detail. Ah it's mad. Regardles of this anyway, even if you could ernestly place two sensible, sound arguments next to each other and easily see which was better than the other, two sure isn't enough. it's stupid, you don't get an acurate, true perspective at all. you hear two middle of the road views out of a million that probably exist (probably, yet I don't know, becuase we don't study them). Oh, it's all a waste of time. German's nice, though :)


My grades oscillate wildly. I hate it.

It's all just like my art history essay. I know it got a 3/8, and was the worst of the worst as far as my scholarship papers went, but it's still my favourite, and I think my most accomplished peice of essay writing that I've ever done. Sure a 32/32 Media paper is pretty, and it feels good, it does, and it was most-likely the most conventially pefect essay, intro body conclusion, simple socially consious politcally correct yet challenging argument posed and put forward powerfully and with sound structure in a single vien throughout the whole of each essay, but god it was boring, and I sure didn't believe the crap I came up with. grand conclusions about the role of maori in modern media, or the role of directors in shaping something or other, i can't even rember. no. conclusions are utter bullshit. How can you... you can't. You cant conclude things. it's like you know them, you understand them perfectly, you've solved all the problems, shown everyone how it really is in a neat little 1,500 word package, and there you go. you can't capture the world, even one aspect of it, like a media industry. you can't.

take a flower. you cant even capture a flower.

like this: 'flower'.

did that capture the flower? no, it didn't. even if one was to go 'the gorgeous red rose, serene in the evening sunlight, magestically rose above the other flowers of the garden' one can't capture the flower. Even in 'the blossoming rose, swaying ever so slightly in the oncoming brezze, almost teasingly, as if to say 'you may write about me in your notebook, but you should never understand me' drew my attention for a just second, before I was quickly called away to other business. Yet it left an impression that would endure for days, untill I retured to the garden the next time. (and so on and so on and so on) can't capture the flower.

even a picture of the flower can't capture it. Even seeing the flower, smelling it, touching it, all these, can very rarely result in fully comprehending the flower. there are too many things in the way. One can't ever be the flower, fully get inside its consiousness.

One could scientiffically descibe it certianly, probably in this modern day and age fairly accurately, but as we know it may just be missing something. In the scientific description for example, the flower can not talk. there are many issues like this that are oh so tricky to deal with (I'd like to deal with some, but no one seems to be able to tell me where to start, not even wikipedia).

Anyway art history. And this is what I wrote about, untimately. Set a whole bunch of ponsy arguments about the neccessity of art, the importiance of one formal element of another, etc. etc. etc. said God, look, they're all fine, fine arguements, and well well done to the men who wrote them certianly, well done, fine arguments. But surely the only reasonable conclusion one can really, and i mean really come to though, looking at all these fantastically absolbutely logical arguements, is that none of them really matter. They all make sense. and so none do. you see it's preposterous to have a model that explains the whole role of art in the world, or why we need art. It's ridiculous to claim that line is more importiant that clolour, or depth more importiant than form. are you mad? and to think you have this arguement, and so now it's all solved, and you are right, and we understand art now, and it's okay, and everyone can go to sleep and not worry anymore becuase it's okay art is solved? no, no no! I say, i say, if all of the arguments make sense, none do, and therefore we should just leave art alone, and stop trying to claim the absolubtle rightnesss of one arument or another, the importiance of one formal element of art over another, and just let art be. "There is no must in art, for art is free" wrote Kandinsky. I wrote it too. I got a 3. but it's a beautiful 3. If any of my essays were worthwhile, if anything in that year was worth while, along with reading heart of darkness and having Savage as a teacher, it was that.



Also, as a footnote, FUCK motherfucking having torrettes syndrome for making this take 5x as long to write as it should if someone just had normal hands and normal eyes and a normal fuckingggg brain that didn't have weird issues.


Also, I really want to read Moby Dick again already. it's my favourite, I swear, but I really don't have any idea what it's about. which is fantastic, right? Also, why isn't theology a properly accredited subject at school? Also, I thank the christian club I accidentially signed up to (long story, yes, but they were giving out free jandals) for sending me a free footnoted New Testament just randomly the other day. it's been helpful in reading Brothers Karamazov. see even saying you read books sounds ponsy. I want to just go and sit in the rain and be cold.