Unalterable

I was nearly late for Slicer’s lesson and afterwards, me, Duncan and Claire went and groveled to Gray and persuaded him not to have the History test. It’s all OK and a laugh at the time but things are getting late, the net is closing. . . .

Other than this, I spent most of my time at school being really lazy and an absolute slob, lying full-length on the floor reading The Job, which is fascinating. Burroughs seems a more progressive, deeper thinker than Kerouac although I disagree with some of the things he says about family, women and Reich’s D.O.R. etc. . . He's a total original though. However much I claim to agree with violent riots by the youth, the abolition of family, the invention of artificial wombs, single sex species,  etc., I’d find in practice they’d run contrary to my undeniable reactionary, retiring streak. I’d never have the guts to act on my ‘beliefs.’

I left with Lee at three and we went into Easterby: nearly-new-shop happiness for a while, trying on trilbies, coats, trousers I’d never have the guts to to wear, unlike Lee. He’s buying a tuxedo jacket and says I can have the big black incredibly baggy Charlie Coroli trousers with fancy black bandleader style braiding down each leg. I bought my £2 Pigbag ticket.

At home after watching TV, Mum, Dad and I got to talking about sadness, death, and the passing of time, Mum telling me she’d told Nanna P. my comment that we've been brought up to think so much that we can never be truly happy which had struck Mum and Nanna P. thought “strange.”

But it’s true. Reality is never as good as hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Everything we hope for is lost because we all die, our friends all die and we're really just caretakers of the “possessions” we give up as soon as we die. We are born with nothing and return with nothing which I'm sure is why so many artists, poets, writers, and musicians (the “enlightened”) burn out quickly, die young, commit suicide. All the unalterable hanging around, waiting for death, is too much to bear.

I watched a sad play about two Irishmen growing up together and being pitched into WW1 where they are ordered about by incompetent and odious buffoons-of-officers who make them crawl, grovel, and eat shit. Poor blameless soldiers live and die in squalor because governments demand they fight their wars for them: "You are an officer. You must not talk with the soldiers!" Forget about being human: morality doesn’t come into it. "Be a man! Be a soldier!" It makes me so bitter. One of the Irishmen was shot by his friend to save him from the firing squad.

I had to leave at this point, filled as I was with a knot of anger and a demands for an explanation. What gives those people the right? Why it is tolerated? It’s hard to explain what I felt and can’t be conveyed in words.

Andrew has come up for Janet's kid's christening. He's annoyed that the guitarist for The Steady Highs nicked two £11 lamps when they played: "We're on their side! I'm sick of people out for everything they can get, sick of the money grubbing. No one does things for the fun of it any more!"