Officially Saying Goodbye To My 10 Year Plan.

*see audio of post at the bottom

Hi There!

Undeniably, I never believed I would be writing this especially one year ago when I, in all my naivety thought I had my entire life path figure out. A 10 year plan to be exact. My sontaran stratagem was to bust my ass, get an idiotic ATAR and go to law school for 5 years. I would eventually get a well paid job as a lawyer somewhere in the inner city and live in a sweet apartment in Paddington with my partner and two dogs named Barkbra Streisand and Puppy LuPone. Even still this sounds like a pretty 'good' life. The thing I neglected to consider in all of this was whether I actually wanted this 'good enough' life for myself, or whether I simply deemed it as successful and attainable. Family connections in the industry would have made it easy enough me to fulfil this goal but upon reflection I think that in the process of making these plans I was subconsciously aiming to please others and not myself. 

I recall sitting in legal studies class in high school and recognising, in my head how much more excited I was for English. When people would ask me about my hobbies or my passions, I would always answer with "I love to read and write". For as long as I could remember literature was the only thing that set my soul on fire. It was the one thing that allowed me to feel insatiable highs and the shallowest lows. At times it is all consuming and it is able to transport me elsewhere. Even when I'm not engaging in the act itself I am always thinking about it. I would even say "I can be a lawyer in the day and write books when I get home" as if being a lawyer wouldn't be my full time job. So why didn't I follow my inner child who told me what my calling was? Was out of practically? to impress other people? for security? I think it is a likely mix of all of the above. Obsessed with retaining an image that only I held of myself, I dreaded that doing the old switcheroo in my senior years would make me seem unequipped and aimless. More, I would have nothing to work towards. With nothing to work towards what would I have to stress about? With nothing to stress about I would actually have to figure out how to have a life!

I love to be in control and have always felt the desire for the highest possible level of certainty and stability. I didn't like the idea of being a struggling artist who couldn't pay their bills. I was foreshadowing an unforgiveable sacrifice of 10 hours every day at a job I didn't love just to know I would come home and sleep in an expensive bed. Upon retrospection, I find it uncomfortable how radically I enforced the idea that it is impossible to get a well paid job that isn't in a stuffy old office. I truly didn't believe it was possible. Now, I find it even more unbearable to envision a life in a corporate office in which I would sit all day dreaming and getting distracted by the illustration I want to do when I get home or the book I want to finish. 

More than that, I can now deeply understand the struggle I had with my self worth and how the treatment of myself was incredibly conditional (I am still guilty and working on it). I was only worthy if I was getting good grades and appeared as intelligent and successful to those to which I deemed it mattered. A crippling anxiety around failure meant I was too scared to drive a car or find a partner for fear of doing it all wrong (I can now drive a car but I am still working on the latter). Almost every morning, I catch myself out feeling unworthy if my outfit isn't up to the usual standards. I place such high regard on my external self expression. I feel that if my outside doesn't perfectly evoke my highest self, no one will love me. If my clothes don't look vintage or unique enough they won't know that I'm an old soul who like classical rock and Alan Ginsberg. A striking paradox still exists. I panic that my outfit is too odd therefore no one will think I am cute but also fearing that if I don't wear it and do meet someone I will be showing a constructed imitation of myself. I know that my worthiness of love is NOT determined by how vintage my ruffle blouse is or how well I did in an exam, but at times I still forget. 

So now what? I have left my law degree and my job at a law firm and I am studying English literature and working at a bookstore. Honestly, I could not tell you. I have some ideas I would like to toy around with and a pretty solid list of routes I could take, but at the moment I am trying really hard to just *vibe* and stop freaking out. Funny enough, a man walked up to me the other day after work and whispered "It's bizarre isn't it? You know what you have to do and you have 60 years left to do it. You are going to change the world" and then booped my shoulder and walked away. After the initial shock wore off, I chose to believe that he wasn't on shrooms but that he is a psychic or my guardian angel in human form... well why not? I might be right. 

To bid ado I would like to share an increasingly fitting quote from the love of my life David Bowie who once said "I don't know where I'm going from here, But I promise it won't be boring".

All the love, 

Scarlett in the sky (with diamonds)

'Enigma Variations' | Aciman has created another masterpiece

 Hey There! 

Andre Aciman wrote a series of novellas following the loves of a single mans life and it blew me away. Admittedly sometimes it takes me a while to get knee deep into his books and they usually take me up to a week and a half to two weeks to finish but I KNOW that I have to read them as they contain such powerful and poetic nuggets that resonate with me in such a unique way. These stories are short and sharp and as each one ends it becomes stark and frustrating. It’s inconclusive but that’s why it’s beautiful because stories don’t usually show that life is inconclusive and blunt. Aciman is expert in showing the raw and beautiful nature of humanity and of love, this novel characterises his entire purpose as a writer by showing that love is abrupt and beautiful but not always peaceful.

Paul's 'First Love', an obsession with his towns cabinet-maker was written in true Aciman fashion. It felt similar to Elio and Oliver's relationship at the beginning of 'Call Me By Your Name', the younger boy pining over the humanity of the other (see quote from page 34) . But Nanni was sweet, he was paternal and though he never indulged in baby Paul's desires it was obvious that he dared to neither squish nor shame them. This became so clear when Nanni and Paul's dad ended up being in love. It felt really full circle and comforting. This story felt the most powerful and daring to me out of Paul's loves.

Paul's 'Star Love' was interesting also. I think that he would say that his Star Love was the love of his life. Though they rarely spoke , always fought and sometimes hated each other there was a soul tie between the two which meant that they could never fall out of love with each other. This one was like an arrow to the heart, I always imagined that that is how love should look. But it was by far the least satisfying to read about. In this section he has a point of showing cheating in a really baffling way. He doesn’t make it seem unethical but rather actively experiencing something new or different, nothing more and nothing bad.

I felt it important to note a quote towards the end of the book when he fashions the lamppost simile (see bold quote below) . The lampposts standing like people in the quadrangle of his soul place presents to me almost as a Charles Dickens like version of the Christmas Carol or a TS Elliot Hollow man moment where his past selves, current self and versions of him that never materialised stood and watched him drink from the wine of life with his star love.

Once again I felt like I was reading an epic and not a romance novel. This book was so beautiful and raw. The way Aciman explores the pure fluidity of sexual desire in a shameless way paints a utopic vision for the future of love in a world that embraces the beauty of gender without using it as a prison. It shows a alternative present where experiencing feelings to their height, their capacity is the most beautiful form of self love.

MY TABS:

• "I wanted to come back on the morrow and work with him, sit face-to-face with him as we'd done today, and occasionally draw closer to him to get a whiff of his underarms, which smelled like mine but much stronger" page 34
• "which is the beauty of assumptions: they anchor us without the slightest clue that what we're doing is trusting that nothing changes. We believe that the street we live on will remain the same and bear its name forever. We believe that our friends will stay our friend, and that those we love we'll love forever. We trust and, by dint of trusting, forget we trusted" page 38
• "Ill do exactly what the Brits did when they broke the Germans' Enigma code during the war. They knew when and where the Germans were planning bombing raids. But they refrained from stepping up defenses for fear of giving away that they had decrypted the enemy's code" page 97
• " 'We're all a bit like that aren't we? Like Sicily, I mean" ... 'We lead lives, nurse more identities than we care to admit, are given all manner of names, when in fact one, and one only is good enough' " page 107
• "My passion feeds on everything but air, then curdles like bad milk that never goes bad enough. It just sits there" page 132
• "I looked at your face and it was the face of someone with a scar on his inner right thigh. It made you so human. It loved you human. I wanted to hold you" page 151
• "...when we stared at each other in the way she wanted and has taught me to want, she and I were one life, one voice, one big, timeless something broken up into two meaningless parts called people. Two trees grafted into each other by nature, by longing, by time itself" page 184
• "Yes the past is a foreign country... but some of us are full-fledged citizens, others occasional tourists and some floating itinerants, itching to get out yet always aching to return" page 193
• “There is a life that takes place in ordinary time… And another that bursts in but just suddenly fizzles out. And then there is a life we may never reach that could so easily be ours if only we knew how to find it. It doesn’t necessarily happen on our planet but it’s just as real as the one we live – call it our star life” page 195
• "I have drunk from the wine of life as last" page 195
• “Learn to see what’s not always there to be seen and maybe then you’ll become someone” page 197
• “Regret is how we hope to back into our real lives once we find the will, the blind drive and courage, to trade in the life we’re given for the life the bears our name and only ours. regret is how we look forward to things we’ve lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We are torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays its cosy little tricks” Page 188
• “They understood so many, many things about me and in ways I might never fathom. And for a moment I thought they were not just lampposts but a collection of blazing selves shifting about in the cold, no different from nine head lit skittles, my nine lives, my unborn, unlived, unfinished nine selves asking whether they might be invited too or what to do with themselves if their time hadn’t come” page 232
• “Star love, my love, star love. It may not live but never dies. It’s the only thing I’m taking with me, and you will too, when the time comes” page 233

All the love, 

Scarlett in the sky (with diamonds)