So the academic year is over, and the results of the year's toils are in... I'll be candid; my exam results were bad. When compared to my peers' marks, my results were heartbreakingly dismal. High 2.1s and low 1st's were the order of the day; whereas I scraped a 2.2 by the hair of my teeth. A very poor show. However, don't be deceived, I wasn't disheartened by my marks, I was quietly, very grateful. I had done scant to deserve even the low grade I had managed to achieve. Having always been someone who didn't have too work hard in school to achieve fairly high marks; my early successes helped to engender a very laissez-faire approach to academic work. I can masquerade quite convincingly as a bit of a know-it-all; what with my needlessly floral and pretentious diction and good recall abilities. However, at tertiary education this apathetic approach has been tested to its very outer limits. But I simply cannot muster the motivation, no matter how interesting the topic to exert myself in my chosen field of endeavour. In my free time I could remorselessly stare for an hour out of the window without so much as a cursory glance at Russian verb tables, gerunds or declensions.
When the time comes to be assessed, I'm filled with some pretty powerful feelings of self loathing; during exam time, I sit in the exam halls, cursing my past-self for fucking me over quite so royally. But then, says I to myself, "all is not lost, I'm a pretty intelligent guy, even if I do end up failing my course. Maybe I make my riches turning my hand to a bit of creativity. Yeah, I'd like that, maybe I'll become a poet, or an author or singer-songwriter, that'd be swell!" So I sit at my desk with a blank pad of paper and a fresh pen and start writing:
Words materialise swiftly. Interesting rhyming schemes manifest themselves before my eyes. I start getting into the swing of it. I'm writing furiously, working harder than I have for months. Then suddenly, three hours have passed and I've hit a lull. I look cautiously for the 3rd or 4th time back over what I've just done, but this time with more sober eyes, less drunk with ego and misplaced self worth. The words now seem contrived, disgustingly gloopy and cloying, and ultimately, very poorly realised. So I screw everything up, making sure to tear it to ribbons, lest someone discovers it, and laughs loudly and with unmitigated derision at my emotions laid so very bare in such an appallingly amateur fashion.
In this new, lugubrious [brilliant word btw] mood, I finish the ritual creative orgy by taking a famous piece of work by somebody halfway decent and rewriting it as a disgusting scrap of toilet humour, lampooning the author unfairly, so that I feel somehow vindicated, knowing that, if my work ever saw the light of day it would be met with even more savage criticisms. This end result is the foul proverbial ejaculate of a long, frustrated session of metaphorical masturbation. Eww... sorry.
The eventual outcome is acceptance of my own mediocrity. This in turn precipitates even more ambivalence and inner conflict. But what can I do? I'll tell you. I plug in the Xbox and spend the next few hours venting my dissatisfaction by murdering vast swathes of blameless civilians on GTA4...
I am the paragon flaneur and these were my 'confessions'; High Renaissance Man, eat your heart out!
I like to keep a vague theme of travel as a pretext for these posts, so here is one of the aforementioned 'foul ejaculates'. It is a rip-off of S.T.Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It was quite a cathartic to write, and it amused me when it was done... Let the narrating voice inside your head be that of Sir Ian McKellen.
THE RIME OF THE FECULENT MARINER
by R.Q.Walker
It is a fetid Mariner;
On the ship's poop deck he stands,
With a painéd face and an awkward gait,
He shuffles, wringing his hands.
The Helmsman fussed,
-“What plagues thee thus?”
-“My bowels are churning grim!”
-“Weigh anchor you fool!”
-“But I must go make stool!”
said the mariner unto him.
The Helmsman cared not for this pre-pubic scrot,
He screamed and he whipped and he threw,
The mariner sank down, for his breeches were brown’d;
In his hose sat a voluminous poo.
The mariner was seized by the scruff of his neck
And kicked to the starboard side,
Though he wriggled and stank, he was put on the plank
And the shipmates looked on as he cried.
The First Mate stepped up and each cocked his ear;
All waited and watched in a line.
The mariner’s face was etched with fear,
The First Mate’s shout was loud and clear!
And the mariner was pushed into the brine.
With one more shout, he was hoisted out,
and cast upon the deck.
This wretched boy in seconds flat
Was reduced to a cowering wreck.
He got up as they jeered, then he tacked and he veered;
Burst straight through the privy door,
Although his hose were stainéd brown
His sphincter held back more!
He sat down and with a frown
The faeces followed free!
Relief had come! forced ‘twixt his bum!
The Mariner sighed with glee!
The Mariner did not sleep that night
He'd suffered tremendous scorn!
But I promise you this,
More feculent, rose he the morrow morn!
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