I've spent two weeks saturated in information, half of which I haven't been able to understand and has thus simply paralysed my eyes: like neon signage in Japanese. I don't understand international economics, or the Russian Revolution. This is funny, because humanities has always been something my brain has always been geared for. Regardless, its not just school; information has been confronting/attacking/assaulting me lately but the question of whether I want it to stop or not is something I'm having trouble coming to terms with.

 

I cleaned my room tonight. I'd never realised what an absolute quagmire of miscellaneous crap had accumulated in my shelves and in my files and drawers, but I never knew how much of a mindfuck going through it all could be. Don't get me wrong, I actually love spring cleaning; I'm a stickler for organisation and because text plays such a huge role in my life, getting back into control of it feels like getting head repairs: afterwards, I feel like i've been through surgery, like i'm out of the ether, but clean. Like Bjork says: "a little bit tired, but brand new".

 

I emptied a drawer and found years and years of writing. I'd never ever have considered myself a writer until this evening, when I literally looked at a seventeen year history of my mind captured on paper. I cannot possibly convey in words the psychological effect of seeing your past self in words on a page.

 

 

 

 

That was me in year 9. I recognise the car-crash handwriting.

 

Two weeks ago I started an affair with Moleskine notebooks, trying to reignite the schtick i was keeping up in primary school of writing down what I heard or saw in real life which had the effect of resonating in my head. Seven years ago I wrote things down such as 'waterwell', 'necropolis', 'elemental forces'. Last week I wrote down 'sodium pentothal', 'xinlixue', and 'shoegazing music'. It's an obsession more than anything: all of a sudden I'm feeling this pressing need to actually record the machinations of my own head.

 

There's no other way to say it: I'm a text person. I have explosive text generation abilities, there is writing on pretty much everything I have ever owned. It varies from the mundane to the creative. It's all history. But everything in history is a skeleton: the 1920s art deco buildings in New York are being used by 21st century artists right now, with peeling ceilings and all. History would only never exist in the physical if each generation was to completely begin again: new buildings, new language, new culture. This is the point: history takes up space. The past lives on the same plane as the present. And just like the recognisable lines of history that we can see running in the real world, from the Decameron to Jules Verne to 2001: A Space Odyssey to The Matrix, so too can I see lines of history running through and from my own head. The major question, therefore, is how, like Ozymandias, I plan to attempt to make myself last forever.