Monday, September 20, 2010

3 years is a long enough time for a water bottle, right?

I have this water bottle that I bought from kathmandu, the outdoors shop. I bought it in 2007, after picking the pieces of my life up after the mental hospital incident. In some ways I'm over what happened. In other ways it has never left me. I started getting into fits of anger and I chose not to back down. Lots of negative stuff came up from back then.

I was always sentimental, but around the time after the hospitalisation, and most notably when I started my masters; I began behaving in ways that were sentimental and attached to various items. I still am to a great extent, although most of the items are over two years old now.

I felt that my old MP3 player represented a moment of healing, it also represented Marie; she had the same model as I, and it was how we bonded. When that mp3 player broke during my dissertation, I bought a new one. It is still with me now, can you believe I've had an mp3 player for 2 years? It doesn't feel that long. It feels like it's always been a companion of mine. Technology, clothes and other odd little things become attachments to me, expressions of an essential me. I don't like having my wallet replaced, for instance. I love my wallet, I love my watches (p.s. I need to replace my watch batteries) and I absolutely love my boots. My cycling gloves that I use for jogging, I've had since before I was 18 years old. They still fit and they are still durable.

Although I like to have lots of gadgets; I am very attached to them and I sincerely beleive that my personal effects should endure. I don't really llike 'replacing' or updating things; although sometimes its inevitable. If something breaks down, I take it as an oppurtunity for renewal. Most things these days are designed with a shelf life, most of the things I buy have a pretty good shelf life I must add. My water bottle has lost the traction in the cap. That sounds weird, in other words it means 'it doesn't close properly anymore'. It's also got loads of hits and scratches from me carrying it around everywhere. Its an oppurtunity to buy a new water bottle.

There was a time when I got thin, that I felt that I needed to stick to my look. My look was immortal and inflexible. There came a point maybe late last year, or early this year, when I realsied how stupid that kind of thinking was. I began to let go of those prejudices, let go of that kind of thinking. I don't need to carry a swiss army gadget everywhere with me; I don't need a base layer everywhere I go, I don't need to carry my wallet, and keys, and phone, and mp3 player, and glasses, and torch and other random shit with me for every single possible time i leave the house. I let go of those prejudices and rituals and fixations, and I became a little bit more normal.

Those 'fixations' are also barriers I have. I let go of those little barriers, and I'm naked, defenseless. I'm scared.

I have an interview tomorrow. Its for an office manager internship, the employer/interviewer who emailed me seems really nice, she's probably in her 20s-early 30s judging by her diction; she probably reads heat magazine and follows celebrity culture. Those are my prejudices by the colloquial nature of her written english. Talking of reading; I've avoided my albums this week. I don't really feel like listening to music. I feel stuck with shitty boring albums, and I hate my playlist. What I'd do to eradicate it from my bloody listening pile. I quite liked the skins soundtrack and I really liked listening to unfamiliar and diverse music. I hate having to conform to this 'fan' label, I dont want to have to listen to heavy metal anymore. I'm tired of heavy metal. Some black metal bands are nice, but I'm tired of listening to consistently low quality music that does not seek to expanding its territory but instead consolidating it, and in the least aesthetically noble of ways possible.

In summary, I need a new water bottle. For me this reflects a subtle transition in all this energy and emotional baggage I'm carrying with me. It would do me some good to let go of it, to let go of the past. Sometimes the barriers I have to the outside world are also the barriers to my progress. Barriers are also protection from the hoardes. In other news:

1. I've changed my intern day from weds to thurs
2. I bought tickets for isy suttie tomorrow
3. I got another bbc ticket for a classical music recording (I'm agnostic to whether I shall go, still)
4. I applied to two jobs today, while casually pissing about
5. Dad pissed me off

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