+ity, -ity,

The transition from pessimism to optimism is extremely hard, cause the pessimist doesn't believe it's possible. A self-perpetuating state...a negative feedback system. So change depends on a momentary forgetfulness of that state: positivity sees it's chance and swoops triumphantly, and you're miraculously borne upwards into another plane of being.

Talking of this kind of reminds me of something i read in philosophy last semester. Something about how humans elevated consciosness give objects meaning. Implying that before we evolved, gracing the planet with our reflexive minds, everything was worthless. Or at least theoretically. Cause we attribute them meaning.

I don't like this perspective. It's bloody anthropocentric. I like to think of objects having innate value. That there's some glade in the woods that has never been appraised by the critical human eye, and yet still thrums with worth. Hey, forget glad in the woods. What about the frickin universe-minus-the-mote-that-is-earth?? Sheesh.

Hmm. How was that at all related to how i started off? I forget.

I'm listening to an english lecture write now (this keyboard scuffling = concentration blip) and there's this phrase she keeps using over and over that sounds so snooty that i want to jab that computer screen every time i hear it: 'as it were'. What does it even mean? Who the f uses it nowdays? AS IT WERE.

'Let me introduce a new way of unpacking, or as it were, decomposing these textual economies'.

BLEH. Really. Seriously? What are you like?
Is the pot calling the kettle black? But i dont' do that. Here, quickly, here: i make a standing oath: i shall never EVER say 'as it were'.

All right then. I've had my spiel.
As you were.

Why is it that in summer, you can never quite breathe in enough oxygen? The air is heavier somehow. Even if you breathe like a buffalow, or transform yourself into some glass-blowing bellows machine, the quivering cells in your lungs still gasp for more. I've been exhausted all week. For no real reason. Dragging myself through the days, seeing a desert beneath the deceptive curtain of the green uwa campus. Fixated with a kind of detached dismay at how every cell seemed to wimper out in protest at the prospect of exertion. hehe, i very nearly fell asleep in one of my lectures. DROWWWWWWWWWWSSSYYY.

I had the best break i can remember ever having though. I wish i could just for a moment incarnate that glorious week just so i could hug it. Going to the beach...catching up with friends...sipping curiously away at a cider and feeling the not unpleasant novelty of slight drunkenness...kayaking with Jemps on the still waters of Matilda Bay...

Yeah. It was all good. God i wish i'd had the courage to explore all these spaces that blossom in the beautiful axis of the right time and the right company. I need someone to work on me with a jackhammer to crack out all the surface stiffness.

An end in themselves....

Not a lot to record in the Journal of Kate. Not sure i'm socially integrating that well into uni life... I can't quite configure how people get from being strangers to being friends. I guess it just takes me a long time to trust anyone, to be openly familiar with them. So- in the critical preliminaries- i'm kind of cold and distant. Not a very appealing starting point. SIGH. But i talk about these things as though they are indelible, written in stone. I'm not fated to be a social misfit (or am I? Even in preschool i remember that sense of not fitting in. I remember myself playing dress ups in my own little fantasy world, while other kids interacted. Cripes.)
No, i refuse to believe in THAT kind of destiny. After my philosophy course however, i can't help BUT believe in determinism though. It's blinking irrefutable, and that's why its so depressing. I don't know if you're familiar with the theory, but if not, the basic idea is as follows:

...ok i'm too lazy to reconjure the theory from memory, so i found this in last semester's exam notes:

"Hard determinism resolutely denies the existence of free will. In Holbach’s unequivocal words: “Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for a instant” . According to the theory, every event is necessarily determined by the unique set of conditions that immediately precede it. Likewise, that preceding order was the end product of the inconceivably complex formula of interacting components which were its antecedent. And so it goes, ad infinitum to the beginning of the universe (granted there was a beginning). Man can be described as the sum of circumstance; for circumstance is merely the macroscopic and temporal result of interlinking natural laws. The individual is cast into a genetic mould upon conception, and from birth has no say in which forces should harshly buffet or gently mould him, ultimately dictating his every protean trait. In this sense, not only the jailed have no freedom, but so in the jailor; the oppressed and the oppressor, the mentally afflicted and the sane. None can lay legitimate claim to a shred of autonomy in their conduct and behaviour, bound by the fact that they could not have done otherwise than what they do."

Bleh. How prattish I sound. Sometimes i hate words. No, that's not right. I hate this mentality (that, admittedly, i'm weaning myself of) that to sound smart, you have to inject it with complicated, indecipherable words. NO! I RESIST! The best writing expresses itself clearly, using words which best communicate its meaning, not the ones which make it sound snotty. I REJECT THAT. Hey! No! Look at me Kate! What about JK Rowling? Tim Winton? ANY of the great authors (yes, i regard Rowling as a great author. It may not be "literature" as those ACADEMICS would classify it, but MEH, i say MEH). Think about their writing! The beautiful architecture of it, not the glamour of the building blocks.

...Forgive me. I'm in the process of self-education here. Which goes against some old, entrenched habits.

OMG MUM WILL YOU STOP SAYING ETC!!!!!!! IT IS SO ANNOYING!!! AT THE END OF EVERY SENTENCE!! EVEN IF THAT SENTENCE CLEARLY ARTICULATES ALL IT INTENDED TO SAY!!! ET CETERA, ET CETERA, ET BLOODY CETERA!!!!!

There are some things that you just can't help but tighten your jaw at.

Anyhoo, it seems i have, once again, meandered off course from the initial subject. I was talking about the dynamics of friendship...the unplottable progression towards it. You know, i actually get shocked when people who have just met are open with each other, joking around like they're old buddies. I think, at such times, i actually stare at the impossible MATERIALISATION of this space of intimacy that they share. I think i think too much of the logistic of it. Agonisingly pondering the economics of gesture, movement, the sound of my voice cutting through silence.

HAHAAHAHH- you know, when i get really self-conscious, i am suddenly very aware of my nostrils. Like, worrying if they're flaring or not. *cackles hysterically*

...

I keep thinking of something this other philosophy guru (Kant) said. It's just a snippet from one of his normative ethical theories which i thought was rubbish, but in isolation, it just stuck with me: To treat people not as means to an end, but as ends in themselves.

Yeah. I'm Hip.

OK, so i'm not the MOST 'in' with today's teenage lingo. MSN-speech. Twitter-talk (aka twat). The identity-asserting idiom of our gen. *gibbers and gestures excitedly to her use of the word 'gen'*

It's kind of embarrassing, actually. People around me are always using slang. When they do, i can only respond blank-faced. Or sometimes i take a wild stab at delivering the correct reaction: nodding sagely, laughing sardonically, etc. Although usually i just get looked at strangely. And then the hearty/knowing false laugh gurgles weakly down into silence.

At least when reading something you don't run the risk of exhibiting your ignorance, and can discreetly look up the definition in dictionary.com. As i did when reading a friends blog (Sam groans and forehead-palms)

totes: an open handbag or shopping bag used esp. for carrying packages or small items.

Or was it a juxtaposition between matureness and teenage slang? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

I even had to look up 'stoob': the insult thrown at those who couldn't decipher 'totes' independently.

STOOB: ........'did you mean STB/stab/stub?'
Wikipedia wasn't any help either:
STOOB- "a town in the district of Oberpullendorf in Burgenland in Austria".
Enlightenment was achieved at urbandictionary.com...
STOOB- Stoned, unmotivated, idiot, boring, fiend, clumsy, greedy, selfish, unsociable, silly, lazy friend/person.

It even gives examples of STOOBS in sentences:
Your blazed out friend says something he thinks is quite funny', eeeeeerrr, shaking your head, laughing at his pointless remarks, "fuckin stoob".

Waiting over-time for pizza to be delivered "where and what the fuck are these stoobs doing with our pizza".

Hmm. This site could be an essential resource for me. It could even by my social salvation.

Hey, awesome! Word of the day:
TESTICULAR FORTITUDE: balls, guts, intestinal fortitude.
Used in a sentence: He lacked the testicular fortitude to stand up to his boss.

The Escape; from humiliation into the shades of dusk

It all boils down to one question really. That's what i realise right now, staring down glumly at my scattered sheets on WA hydrology and soil and the virtues of dung and stuff. Yes, one single question. 'Can I be stuffed.'

No. No i cannot.

A little while ago, i exited my habitual study den and braved the outside elements. Embraced Spring! Well, if you go by date that is. It don't really feel like Spring at this first, fragile turn of season. Yet my hopes have been lifted. It's the opposite of the feeling of impending doom as Autumn withers itself away. From winter to spring is an upward swing, a glorious waxing into sunshine and the bliss of the warmer months. It's all about the anticipation.

Dusk is my favourite time of day i reckon. Everything is so soft-hued and purply. And the clouds! Pink, drifting, golden-gilded. There's a downward sloping alleyway not far from my house and it's almost a spiritual feeling walking down and getting the panoramic view of the humming suburban life being crowned by that radiant disc.

The mood is catching! I saw an old, white-bearded man in dark glasses on a bicycle, playing the harmonica with one hand.

I think i needed Nature's remedial touch after the humiliating state of affairs this morning. You may know by now that i have an incredibly bad memory. My past just drains away. It's rather terrifying really, this things that are lost forever in the chasm of forgotten. Anyway, i have this theory (probably a conceit) to rationalise this poor memory. It's a survival strategy. It prevents me from flinching and squirming myself to death; since i do so for almost every social encounter i've ever had. WHY MUST MY LOOKING BACK BE THROUGH A PESSIMISTIC GLASS? Well, to it. The latest faux pas:
I'm walking towards the lecture theatre for WS. I'm about 10 steps away when i see a girl i've been sitting with so far this semester. She's with 2 other girls and is just about to go through the door. Our eyes meet. 'Hey!' she says. 'Hey!' i say. She goes in with her posse. I trail in behind. As i enter, she sits down in the last row, on the end seat to the left. Naturally, her two friends fill in the 2 seats right of her.
I have 2 options. They flash through my mind in that brief hiatus of indecision, and i teeter on the question of 'what now?'. I can
a) locate a seat alone away from them
b) sit down in the 4th seat to the right.
In the first option, reason is enshrined; risk and madness in the second. Reader, when such a conflict of choice rages within me, i fear to confess reason is sat upon and suffocated by panic and immediacy. Unfailingly, i just give way to whichever course of action will be quicker, requiring less movement.
...
I sunk into the 4th seat.
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!! And what's more, i could not, dared not even turn my head to the left, let alone TRY to engage. I felt as though the muscles in my neck were locked. Or rather, that they had fused to muscles lower down, and i would only ever in the future be able to look left by swivelling my torso.
Instead, i calmly opened uwa's student mag, The Pelican, and endeavoured to read an article whilst wishing will able my being just to evaporate. Shrivel in my seat. Become a gas and deftly waft myself under the crack in the door.

When the lecture was over, i fled. Missing the workshop that immediately followed. But this time, there was no conflict of choice. Escape was the only option.

Right now, i am fruitlessly and half-heartedly scanning the internet for a good, sexist article to castrate for a women's studies assignment (yes, i do WS, fuck off. I'm no dismembering harpy, ok?)

So i was scouring a plethora of newspaper articles from this UK magazine called 'The Guardian', and one title caught my eye: 'Women: embrace your facial hair!'. Beneath was a black and white photograph of a bearded woman.

A partisan of the 'Hairy Awarey' campaign contributed this: "Now I am proud of my hairy lip. I sit playing with it when I am thinking, or watching TV."


"Del La Grace Volcano, formerly known as the lesbian photographer Della Grace, grew her goatee beard in the late 1990s to much media consternation."

and,

"Maybe it's because I am 40, and men look at me less, but I feel so much better now I am letting it all grow out."

HAHAHAHAHHA

yeah, no.

Mmmm. Basking. As though my pores are drinking up the sunshine. Common analogy, strange image. I have no idea how people can stand living in cold climates all year round. My mood pretty much follows the seasons: i'm cold and bitter in winter, warm and genial and lazy in summer. I think i'd become an evil yetti if there was no warm relief in the years cycle, hurling a sharpened ice-pick at whoever got on my nerves.

Oh! A honeyeater just swooped down and collected some straw from one of our hanging baskets! Springs a'comin!
..............................................................................

Some words you just have to say a certain way:

Snigger: pronounce 'schnigger'. Draw out the schh sound

Nerd: pronounce 'nyerd'. Purse your lips like a turtle while you say it and do your bug-eyed impression.

Excellent: Mr burns style.

Kraken: dramatic, Davy Jones style.