Grades

And now I stand here, branded for life by letters which do not take into consideration circumstance or personality. This group of letters, collected together after years, will now stand to reflect my intelligence and my work ethic. They show what I can do. They show what I can’t do. They determine my future - they represent me. I will be left with these letters for life.

I feel these letters are like covers to novels. Sometimes, I’m sure they represent exactly what they’re supposed to. You see an A* cover, you open it, and there is the life of an A* student, there in black and white. But also, they can misrepresent. If you open the book, you may find things you never expected to. Behind a D grade student, there may be unspoken hardships you hadn’t anticipated, invisible broken relationships or pain that is unimaginable. There is no way to tell a person’s story with a simple letter. There is no way to pour humanity into a man made symbol, to whittle life down to a mere grade.

There is no other system. It has to be like this – there has to be some regime that evens everything out, ignores the majority of factors, and puts everyone in the same boat so that they are comparable to one another. I understand this, because this system makes up the fundamental backbone of our working society. But it still doesn’t make it any way right. When a kid is born into a working class family with six brothers and sisters and barely enough food to make it through the day gets bullied for five years because of his hand-me-down clothes, and then gets judged by the same letters as a middle class, well-educated only child whose only hardship in life was his iphone’s battery life – IS. THIS. FAIR?

Well, life’s not fair. But it’s not just to do with money and class. It’s to do with unforeseen situations and other factors which cannot be taken into consideration when they make that A or B, or C, or U official to everyone. Life is something we don’t understand – it is complicated beyond belief. We are beating hearts and blinking eyes, whirring brains and chattering teeth, and each of us splashes a path across the globe, interweaving with other paths and situations and events.  Words and memory spiral from this and history is made; emotions play their song. The future envelopes out in front of us….unknown, not understood, but we take steps towards it anyway because there is nothing else to do but trust. And yet, despite all this complicated craziness, this blast of bizarre brains brought together by some big bang, we label our letters. We reduce our lives down to such simplicity, that sometimes I think we miss the entire point of life itself. If there is a point indeed.

Some will think me bitter for writing this - would I be writing this if I'd got the grades I wanted? Perhaps not.  But it is not just for me that I pose this unwinnable argument. It is for all those people who got letters on their pieces of paper who feel they have a different story to one of laziness or stupidity. Whatever life is, it is more than that. 

Wavering in the past, the present, the future and the imagination

What is the planet? What is the world? What is the solar system? What is this life? What are these intakes of breath, billion upon billions of them, every day?  What are the colours? What is the sky? What are the lives and the thoughts and the beating hearts? Who are they beating for – what are they beating for? What is the mind, what is the soul; what is psychological pain? What is sadness when it is heavy like rocks, what is joy when it lifts you to the edge of the universe? What is a journey, what are these words, why am I writing, why are you reading? How does your brain work – isn’t It beautiful? Isn't the way your fingers bend and the way you blink fascinating, the way your toes quiver, the way your insides squirm. The way no knowledge will ever be enough, the way we wonder and wonder. What is my purpose? My goal? My belief? I am intrinsically linked to the point of restlessness with something that I cannot comprehend. I’ve struck a chord in some dimension that no one even knows about. My life is spent wavering in the past, the present, the future and the imagination; spent half in mind and half in action, questioning things more than anyone could know. Thinking of things and feeling hopelessness, because as humans, it’s hard sometimes not to feel hopelessness when we’ve been presented with life, following each other, leading it, accepting it, and not questioning it. It shakes me, like a harrowing storm, to think so deep; ‘tis safer to stay on dry land: “life’s more painless, for the brainless.” But my mind, she has a mind of her own; I am filled with craziness; everything I touch, like skittles, turns to something odd, something strange, something perhaps ruined. Ruined in the eyes of the beholder, blundering my way through life, wondering if ever I will grasp what is to me an understanding. But we, as human, as simple masters of ourselves and yet brainless, stupid, insignificant nothings, created this word “understanding.” We placed letters together; we learned the concept; we shared the concept. But how is it a word, when understanding does not exist? Everything that you know, that you think you know, is not real. Potentially, none of this is real. None but pain, because that is blinding yet enlightening to the point where it can never fail, walking hand in hand with fear and hate to destroy us all. I have faith in humanity, yet I weep for humanity…I fail to “understand” humanity. I fail to understand myself, or what it is that we plan to do, to enjoy, to cry, to weep, to die. To keep on moving forward, ‘til tears have been shed for eternity, babies have been born ‘til the end of time and things have shifted beyond anything we in this snapshot of time, of this thing we call time, could know. Time, time, time, you slip away, you leave us; where do you go? Is there an intergalactic storage centre in the core of nature, of natural comprehension, where the time goes? Does it frolic amongst meadows, does it sing, does it feel emotion? Is it like sand from a sand timer; will we run out of it, before we run out of air? How do you explain things such as time which are real and fundamental but do not truly exist? How to define what it is to spend time, like it is currency, something you can own. No one owns time, time is unownable; time is in itself a Houdini, a terrific performer; an escapist. I’m taking your time, taking it, right now; as if time can be taken, as if time can be told. As if time has been old and young and born and shall die again. Where am I going with this? That’s not the question, for it seems we have no destination; the word destination is just as made up, just as fake, as what it represents. As false as our metaphors, as our similes, of our allusions. A hopeless destination: perhaps I should be filled with utter gloom, perhaps you’re feeling now like I have overstepped the mark; I have questioned too much. But there is no gloom; there is no need for comprehension, or destination. Enjoy the colours, the sky, the emotion, the air, the time, the feelings that shake your soul, the actions that clear your mind, the movements that evoke thought and happiness. Contentment is in those that accept defeat in all understanding and just wonder, and feel joy in something that is entirely out of reach. World - you are truly wonderful. 

White phantom faces

The white phantom faces whimpered and wept. She strolled among them, draping her darkness, cradling them close to her with those cruel long fingers. They flinched, but still seemed drawn in, fascinated almost. She was the only light in this god forsaken place, but yet darkness followed her like a faithful bloodhound. She smiled crookedly at her trapped phantom faces, but couldn't help but look beautiful. Like a God, they adored her; they unwillingly lay down their lives before her. Why?

All she did was hold them back. She trapped them here, in this darkness, that seemingly had no end or purpose. There was a whole world out there for them to explore, but yet they stayed and stared and cried at her, and she smiled back so lovingly with those perfect pearly white teeth every time. She was almost a sorcerer of some kind, she had them under a spell – a trance, yes – they didn't know what they were thinking. They knew no life without her, and were as faithful as the darkness that trailed behind her in the shadows.

And those on the outside, those who could barely peer in through the dim grimy windows, had no real understanding. It was too dark to really see anything properly, it was almost understandable if they missed her perfect glowing face from where they were looking. Just a bunch of faces, cowering over nothing, hovering together like newborn sightless kittens. How strange, how unnerving. But swallowed up on the other side, from the very jaws of a very real surreal danger, the faces can say nothing, do nothing. They just stare back through the windows and sigh, deep sighs that sound like howling wind on a stormy summer night shuddering through the trees.

After some time, the people will walk away. Something else will catch their attention, because humans are much like that. They will walk away, and the faces will fade from their memories. It was like they never existed, not in the real world. They were made in some fantasy dimension, and that was where they would stay.