29th June 2001
Bubbly Dali

Deus, qui corda fidelium Sancta Spiritus illustatione docuisti : da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sa pere; et de ejus semper consolatione gaundere. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.

Amen.

At last, you're home. This morning, and you're taking an online examination that's really not that hard, and revising your answers at the very last moment. To the wrong answers. Oh, no, don't worry. You know you're going to pass, by a long shot, it'll just be yet another B is all. Yet another B, in the life of a Straight B student. It could have easily been an A, if you'd left well alone, but of course... you feel vaguely unsettled. It's a beautiful, warm, sunny day, so you wander off to a pub, order a pub lunch, and a pint. Your head throbs and everytime you turn your eyes it feels like your skull is exploding in half...

The pint arrives first, predictably. You wait for your food whilst watching the bubbles in your Kronenburg rise gently to the surface. There's a certain beauty in a pint, or rather the way the bubbles rise. Always avoiding the edges, in a steady column, seeding off as baby-bubbles from the base of your glass, then growing steadily larger till they reach the great consortium of mature bubbles at the top of the glass, and ascend into... foam. You spin your glass in impatience, and suddenly you've created a double helix. Watson and Crick, would well have discovered the structure of DNA over a pint glass, you think irreverantly, whilst picking the glass up and beginning to swig. Your headache has miraculously gone away...

Strangely, it actually tastes quite... pleasurable. Could it be that somewhere along the way, you acquired a taste for lager? Perhaps during that strange fortyear of distress... you take another swig, and decide you really DO like the taste of this stuff. Perhaps it's the brand of the beer... it's been two years since you touched lager; since then you've been steadfastedly sticking to bacardi and coke, in a futile attempt to persuade the world that you're a man of immaculate - and expensive - tastes. Or perhaps, in an attempt to persuade yourself that. The last time you touched a pint was a year ago, on boat quay. Overpriced, at $20 a jug, and so watered down you put it down almost instantly and stopped drinking the second you picked it up.

Half an hour and half a pint later, you begin to feel impatient. You're ravenous - have been since you arrived at the pub, and you begin to think about wandering back into the bar to ask the barkeep where your food is. You turn around, still seated, and your world turns - without you. You feel strangely detached, and realise with some horror that you're actually mildly inebriated. On half a pint? You, of the 30 shots no-effect fame? You hear your second year biochem lecturer coming alive somewhere in the depths of your brain - alcohol is best absorbed through the gastric mucosa, on an empty stomach. You sit back down, and continue watching the bubbles in your glass, and the reflection of a nearby tree billowing gracefully in the breeze in the pub window. It's a glorious day, and you can feel the sun on your back. You start thinking of something to write on your webpage...

And as you stand by her side, you feel somehow renewed, rejuvenated, and cleansed. Your hope restored, your crumbling courage returns, and your breath catches as you realise your wait was not, after all, in vain. And suddenly the darkness doesn't look quite as dark after all...

Significances. Significances colour your entire life, I reckon. They don't just alter the way time flows, as milady didst put it in my last post. They alter the way you see life, the way you see the world around you. Time, of course is one of the most obvious signs. Comparatively short moments seem to last a lifetime... hellos! to people you love, moments of parting, someone saying grace - whilst your heart stops -- kissing someone you love, and feeling your soul plunge / rise into the depths of eternity - not for the actions, not for the goodbyes, not for the kiss even... but because of who they are. And how you perceive the moment. You want to remember it forever, whilst you're being overwhelmed by it. It sears itself into your mind...

Significances; I'm done with my exam for the day, I should be feeling completely carefree now, and it's a beautiful, beautiful day. Instead, I feel strangely empty, strangely disconsolate; I'm writing on a web page instead of catching sun in the park. The sunlight is sparkling gleefully off a tree opposite my window - off a white car, opposite my window - off a brown building, opposite my window - and I'm wondering about going gently to sleep, soon.

You're walking home from the pub, and decide to stop by the little mama-shop (yes, we have them in England too) to buy some milk. You realise that your actions are too deliberate, you pick up the milk - carefully. You count your money - deliberately. You pick up the coke and milk - gingerly. You're afraid you'll misjudge the weight and drop it to the floor, maybe. You're afraid they'll realise you're nissed as a pewt... You don't even know why it should bother you, since they're all strangers. What do I care if I lie down on that inviting sidewalk and have a little snooze? But I do... and so you keep the pretense of sobreity.

Alcohol is absorbed best through the gastric mucosa, on an empty stomach.

You cross the road, carefully - after looking left, then right, then left and right again. And step into your own apartment. Standing in front of the mirror, you realise you'd pass off as sober pretty easily. Hello there. Just milk and coke, please. You enunciate clearly enough, your facial expressions are perfect, your motions all on cue. Nothing about you suggests you're pissed. All significances, preserved. All systems, go. And yet, you feel strangely empty...

How many ways do I miss thee?

Let me count the ways. Thine eyes, that doth sparkle with life, yet are capable of such tenderness, such bliss... into which I can almost see, eternity. Thine smile, rogueish? mysterious. contented. cherubic. mischievious. Thine hands, and feet, three quarters the size of my own, yet complete. Completing, me - in my own hands. Thine voice... indescribably rich, in so many ways. Thine mind and thoughts; and wishes, dreams and ambitions, and insecurities... and strengths and convictions...

I stare out the window, and as I watch, hedges sprout from the ground, hedges bearing fruit unripe, unspoken, unsaid - my hedges. Hedges of habit. Hedges I grew up with, hedges that grew up with me - fortifications of imagination. I draw my sabre, and begin to hack them down, determinedly.

It's 1 pm, and my bed is beginning to look incredibly appealing. Significances colour the way you perceive the world, and I thank God that He has reminded me never to leave go of that conviction. As long as you remember who you are, as long as you stave off cynicism of the everyday; as long as you dream - your life will be colourful around you; your precious moments will be Real, and last an eternity every time you recall them, and your darkest moments will feel far away, and transient.

*hic*

Alcohol is absorbed best through the gastric mucosa, on an empty stomach.