poetry in commotion...

After Harry

After my self imposed media ban to avoid potential Harry Potter spoilers, I emerged from the end of the series with a feeling of finality and regret, but at the same time, content.  The series did end well, and there's not much more you can say about that.

The end of Harry Potter also, coincidentally or not, highlighted what appears to be the end of the carefree youth of my peers and I.  Everyone is talking about houses, careers, marriage.  What was once a day to day life of drunkeness and indolence now gives way to a hungry competitiveness of financial and personal success, a pseudo penis measurement contest where the size of your house, the brand of your clothing and the all important annual salary are yardsticks in who's winning the game of life.  There always was competitiveness perhaps between certain peers before, but now the game has gotten bigger; the number of players, the stakes, and the pot, somehow more adult.  Thats probably the thing that irritates me most - that in the space of one or two years, everyone transformed into adults.  Or at least, think they did.  They may now wear a suit 5 days a week, but to me it's still 20 somethings playing at being adult.  

However, the thing is - why the hell is everyone suddenly so fake?  So puffed up on self importance I find it surprising anyone else can enter the same room as them.  Everyone's so eager to impress.  Not that Yours Truly has been immune to it.  You hate someone for all of uni, and then suddenly you're 23 and you see each other again, and you're both pretending to be nice to each other.  The handshakes, the insincere small talk.  The first question is always inevitably: "So what do you do?". The natural instinct is to seek the best revenge: living well.  I did it a couple times and walked away from both conversations with an incredible loathing for myself.  Never again.  I think I'm going to tell people I sell manure.

"So what do you do?"

"I'm an analyst".

"What sort?"

"Market.  Market analyst"

"Where?"

"Synergy."

"Oh cool.  I thought you were a dumbarse back in high school.  'Cos you were failing chemistry".

"Thanks."

It's probably a continuation of my period.  I am filled with such disgust and loathing for most of my peers (and I use the term very loosely, dropping from my tongue like a distasteful hairball) that I quite possibly may not be able to hold back my caustic invective. 

Last saturday, when celebrating my birthday, Dom asked me, "So what have you learned since you were 22?".  To which my answer is friendship and loyalty.  The knowledge that someone is there because they like you, regardless of perceived notions of rank, money or privilege, is a welcome bulwark against friends of convenience: where you are merely another entry in an ever so busy social schedule, or a sap to help you out when you want it.

Also pet peeve: When you break up with someone and you tell others (ie, me), feigning non chalance and acting like he/she was an object does not impress me.  So, sentences like "Oh I didn't like him, so I gave him the flick" achieves the opposite effect: I find it offensive, no matter how much of an asshole I thought the guy was.

posted by jaseypoo! @ 7:03 PM