Personal statement.

The exams were over and done with about a month ago. I remember having worked rather hard for it, but perhaps not in a way to get the best grades - I worked at it in a way that would satisfy myself rather than for the grades, which meant a lot of preparations having to do with the way an essay is structured and the language, and very little time going into practicing writing essays to meet the time-limit. Sounds like such a simple thing to do, but it seems like something I'm constitutionally incapable of - I would always be doomed to not having enough time to finish my essays. Haven't spent enough time on last essays, and spent rather too much time on the first ones. But still, I'll get by with a decent grade, if not one that would make me proud.

I spent the month fussing over my personal statement for my university application - with weddings, food trips, holidays, and books thrown in intermittently. It wasn't an easy month - I didn't have ideas on how to begin writing my personal statement, and even after I had some, it never felt perfect. It is frustrating to be chasing after a missing thing when your brain can't, for the life of it, figure out what exactly that thing is. At some stage, it was the content; at others, it was the language. It still doesn't feel well well-connected now, but after some point, you've got to let go. Listen to Neil Gaiman when he says: 'Art isn't ever finished, only abandoned.'

(Well a personal statement isn't art, but this axiom applies to anything 'creative' that doesn't have a fixed answer; that can be expressed in what seems like a hundred million ways.)

So I'm letting it go now. I've filled in other details in my UCAS application and secured a reference letter from one of my lecturers (it was so complimentary I felt slightly proud, and I'm sure I don't deserve it). The only thing left to do is to plug in the final edit of my personal statement, confirm everything, and send it on its way.

It has been a good project (like anything creative), but one that became frustrating because it was dragged out too long with no other responsibilities in between. Nothing in daily life to push creative buttons, and too much time to reflect on my shortcomings - not quite a good way to spend a month.

The Land of the Dead.

What is it like to step into the land of the dead? For a fleeting moment, I was transported there. I got a glimpse of the life I once lived, a remembrance of the many debilitating weaknesses I had, that I can so neatly define now. And I’ll tell you what happened when I step into the land of the dead.

The beings there are shadows of half-formed thoughts - flimsy, unsubstantial. The hollow men of Eliot’s poem. Leaning together, headpieces filled with straw. When they whisper together, their voices are quiet and meaningless. “Shape without form, shade without colour,/Paralysed force, gesture without motion”. Eliot has been there too. They speak not of the human condition, or anything that requires much thought. Their voices are so entwined with elements of social domination, bullying, bitterness, shallow thoughts - scarcely leaving space for anything else.

(I found this pretentious twaddle in my drafts folder on Tumblr. Must be written a few years ago. It is so pretentiously dramatic, but I thought it's sort of interesting to post it here. I don't even remember which exact event inspired this. God, what was I thinking? Maybe that's why it was in the drafts folder. Interesting, nonetheless.)