Chapter Three

Room 36, IT Suite

18/10/05

10:36

They're being extra-nice, she wrote, you know how people are when they think you're depressed? Well they're right - I am bloody depressed. And the last thing I want is people who have been strangely distant suddenly being psuedo-best buddies with me.

That sounded selfish and nasty, and she knew it. But sympathy was never something Lisa took well. Since she'd told her friends about her break-up, all she'd been subjected too was back-patting, formal niceties and apology.

That's probably the worst bit. The apologies. What are they saying sorry for? That what they'd always knew would happen finally did? Or are they sorry for all the times they had a go at me for being with him? Or do they not even realise that it got to me?

Did the bitterness help her cope? No. It was a lame defence against her own shortfallings. Her friends were doing the only thing they could - wring their hands and try to help, or at least pretend to - but she couldn't quite comprehend her own place in all of this.

I don't really care. It just makes me want to spend less time with them. I wonder when it'll stop - when they think I've got over it? Well how do you get over it? Do you come to terms with the choices that you made? Or do you just pretend it doesn't matter? Because I'm not doing either.

Another lie added to the long list of those she had, and would, tell herself over the coming weeks. Deep down, the sad truth that grew inside her was that she would, eventually, do both.

Interlude II

One Door
Two Door
Three, Four
No Door

You make your choice, you pay your fee,
Read to find
What's behind
Door number three?

Feel the pain
Take the strain
Make the journey
Stay the same

Virtue 'round the white door, intrigue 'round the back,
The high road
Or the low road -
Just never look back.

Soliloquoy I

Do or do not. There is no try.

Is there? Well, sure there is. And that'll make you 'do or do not'. What there isn't, is indecision. It's all binary - you do or you don't. You try or you don't. You die or you don't. There is not 'deciding not to decide'. It doesn't push you through the door, it doesn't propel you past the fork in your life's path.

Hell, most of the time it doesn't matter. You want butter on that toast, or not? Who gives a toss. The bigger decisions, of course, we have more trouble with. So we make it okay to choose wrongly - I'll just divorce, take out a loan, pay a fine, apologise. We're just one action away from taking our wrong decisions back to stage one and making them all over again.

So why do we always make shitty choices? And why are we never happy with the choices we've made?

At the end of the day, every choice leaves a regret behind. A decision implies good things that must be decided between. You can't have your cake and eat it. And so the binary option leaves behind a ghost of the could-have-been. The chosen path is not the troubling matter. It is not our marriages, our financial situation, our laws or our actions that we are troubled with. It's the choices we didn't make that irritate us. It is the ghosts that we have to deal with.

At the end of the day, there are no 'bad' choices. There are decisions we believe in and decisions that we don't. All that matters is that we make the next decision confident that the preceding one was right.

It is the choices we don't make, and the paths we don't take, that define who we truly are. Any fool can be happy with what he has with him. It's the one who is happy with what he's left behind that is truly Happy.

Chapter Two

Listening To - Santa Monica, by Theory Of A Dead Man

Lisa's Apartment
15/10/2005
17:51

Lisa sat at her PC desk, typing. Maths laid strewn in front of her, lit drowsily by a musty light that hung high above her. Darkness didn't feature anywhere in the room particularly, but she was always stuck with the feeling that there wasn't enough light in the room. Tap tap tap. Incessantly, she worked, drumming out formulaic essays, simple poetry and biased arguments. The glow of the monitor seeped into her eyes and began to bleed across her vision.

She shook herself. Too long at a screen. Looking up, she surveyed what she had done. Not much.

Lisa was never proud of what she did. If someone had asked her why, she would probably tell them it was because she was too good for pride, or something witty along those lines. But really it was because she was horribly insecure. Every word, every rhyme, every misplaced syllable; they all jarred in her head, off-key creations of her tap tap tap, none of them working harmony like they were supposed to.

She picked up a few scraps of paper on her desk. She'd poured an idea or two onto them, but they had gone rotten over time. It was so long since she last wrote something of any personal interest, she had forgotten what it felt like. Suddenly, a thought occured to her, and she picked up a headless, red biro, and scribbled Great Men down onto a little square of memo paper. Tomorrow morning the two words would carry no meaning. For now they held at least a little significance.

She opened up another word document and began to type.

What is it about people these days? I'm beginning to feel decidedly out of place. The journalist group suggested writing a magazine on the theme of Identity. Identity? It sounds like an art assignment or some twisted publication from the depths of Bohemia. Why does it sound like that, though? That's what irritates me. I feel like I can't write about it, like I don't understand it the way they do. Ironically, I don't feel that Identity means anything to a person like me. But of course, it is ironic, because that would be enough to write about. Oh, god, the swirling logic.

She pauses, then sneezes, before continuing typing.

What does it mean to me? What a stupid question. Identity is, by definition, all about me. How can I relate it to anyone else, without showing up how pointless the whole thing is? If I write about identity, any meaning that anyone else extracts from it will only be because they, by some freak chaotic chance, have the same feeling as me. Which kind of kills the whole mood anyway, doesn't it? Maybe not.

She considers deleting what she's written, but decides against it. Otherwise, she reasons, she'll never leave any trace of her thoughts behind her. Even if, sometimes, they're a little hard to read.

Bloody bohemians. Nothing's ever simple...

She hits 'Publish', and swears at the light.

Interlude I

Lisa Finn just wanted to be heard,
So she stood up one day in class,
And walked out.
Absurd?
Maybe.
To top it all off,
She missed the bus.

One day,
She says,
She'll make sure it doesn't miss.

Chapter One

Mr. Mufkin reminded me today (through no fault of his own) how much of my bohemian pipe-dream has been drained from me. I seem to have lost the kick that keeps me in with those sexy, revolutionaries of tomorrow. Either that, or I'm more conservative than I let on. Still, I'd recommend you visit the writings of both Mufkin and Sheena Ammonia, as they're both very talented people. Even if they are social revolutionaries.

And speaking of becoming an old, moaning hack - why is nothing simple any more? Is it so difficult to organise one sodding thing? Yes. Of course it is. Because people are either too damn busy or ignorant. Well, I'm sure it'll get done one way or another.

The school... 'zine... is going to get off the ground on Friday. Or at least, it's being pitched as such. Naturally, this probably won't happen at all. Stay tuned for journalistic mishaps! Possibly including coffee and pretentiousness. But definitely no manwhores. You've got to draw the line somewhere.

"It must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

Foreword

Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power just means fuckloads of paperwork.

Oh, good Christ, I'm too old for this shit....