My state of mind #14

I finally have my long-anticipated free year ahead of me... My exams are over, and I can now concentrate on trying to live life with intensity again. When I tell people that I am taking a year, their response is usually "Ah, you can chill." That's the complete opposite of what I want to do. I hate living life with complacency, and it can't be denied that I have been complacent for well over three years.

I turned 20 on the 7th of June. I am no longer a prodigy, but I am still unacknowledged... I haven't given much thought to reaching this age, and this is perhaps due to having so much on during this month.

These are the gifts I received for my birthday:

1. Ipod nano. Received this as my old MP3 player broke. It has kept me amused for hours and hours, and it's already filled with thousands of tracks. I'll be using it for this blog in an upcoming regular entitled 'Ipod Shuffle'.
2. Internet Radio. This came with the Ipod for an extra £2o, so my parents realised that it was a bargain and that they should get it for me even though I will probably never use it...
3. 100,1 Films to See Before You Die. Marvelous book. I used to go to Waterstone's just to flick through it, and now I can do just that. It encompasses everything from great arthouse classics to the biggest Hollywood blockbusters.
4. Twin Peaks - Season 1. I'm a big Lynch fan, and I've been wanting to see this television series for a while. I'll take my time to watch a great part of it this upcoming summer holiday.
5. The Garden of Earthly Delights calender. My parents bought this calender in a museum in Madrid they visited that owns and exhibits this Hieronymus Bosch painting. Each month has a large detail of a specific part in the painting.
6. Hieronymus Bosch magnets. My parents also bought another item sold in the museum - magnets of many of the bizarre creatures featured in the painting. The problem is that I don't know where I'll put them.
7. Último Round by Julio Cortázar. My Chilean uncle-in-law visited our house recently, and my aunt sent him with this marvelous oddity of a book by Julio Cortázar as she knows that I am a big fan. The book is filled with short essays, stories poems and photographs. But it's got two sets of pages to follow, meaning that you can read it in any order you want and thus making you the 'active' reader Cortázar wished you to be.
8. The current Chilean football strip. My uncle-in-law also brought me the current chilean football strip, which they wore at the world cup. I was thinking of putting it on my wall (I also have the 1998 strip on my wal), but I decided to keep it in my draw for future use.

In the half term prior to the start of my exams, I loafed around and procrastinated which was very worrying... I rather hastily prepared myself for them in the last week before they started. The questions I got for my English Literature exam were a gift from the Gods - they were just what I needed. The first one, on the novel Wuthering Heights, was about how in the novel extremes of behaviour are the norm and moderation is not known or desired. The second question, which was about all three texts I studied for A2, was about how the Gothic depicts psychological terrors residing deep within the recesses of the orderly mind. Sadly, I don't think I really went for it and made the most out of these questions.... But I did write relentlessly for this exam, which is a good thing - I didn't even have time to look over what I wrote. In my Film Studies exam I miscalculated the amount of time allocated for the second question, so I wrote very little for it... Again, I feel like I should have done better for this one... My English Language exam was a fucking disaster; I completely cocked it up. For the second section, Language Change, I hardly wrote a page and I kept crossing out and crossing out false start after false start... I looked around and kept seeing every other student immersed in the exam - horrible feeling... I don't know what grades I'll get, but judging from this final exam I'll have to say bye-bye to my hopes of getting into UCL.

I was incredibly pleased to see Chile maintain their qualification form in the World Cup itself, as they played scintillating football in their opening match against Honduras... They completely outplayed them with overwhelming speed and technical skill. After countless dire starts from dire teams, the TV pundits agreed that Chile, with their attacking brand of football, were a breath of fresh air. They did, however, struggle to score and should have won the match 3-0 or 4-0... This was perhaps due to the absence of striker Humberto Suazo. The group was complicated with Switzerlands win against Spain, but Chile once more proved what an exceptional side they are by overcoming them too... Once more, they could have scored more goals as the opponents were a man down, but Switzerland play with 11 men at the back.... If this game made me tense, nervous and frustrated, then it's nothing compared with what the Spain match did to me.... Chile were all over for the first 30 minutes of the match, but Chile's naivety and recklessness cost them in the end. Two grievous errors resulted in two devastating Spanish goals... Yet without this recklessness and naivety, this Chilean side wouldn't have gotten to where they are... I was in such a bad state (I had a screaming fit and knocked over bin outside) that we had to switch the television off for the second side. But Bielsa, the genius that he is, calmed the team down, made sensible substitutions, and got a goal in the second half...... Chile in the end came second place with the same amount of points as Spain, and they accomplished the mission they had to do in the World Cup: get through to the second round. Still, the World Cup draw is really, really fucking poorly done. The four other South American sides made it to the other quarter-finals because Chile had to play Brazil in the second round. Chile are a million miles better than Paraguay and Uruguay but they get to this stage of the World Cup because they have a more favourable draw! Ughrrr. As a pundit said on BBC World Service "But for Chile's tough draw, there would be 5 quarter finalists from South America." As for who will win the tournament itself, my money is still on Brazil: they are deadly and can dismantle and destroy any team they want. Maradona's Argentina are defensively naive and Spain don't live anywhere near up to the hype they were accoladed with.

No-one knew who they were voting for in the last general election; we now have a conservative Britain... Real politics do not win elections - charisma and image do. All the economic and political experts reached the consensus that the most accurately devised policies were from Gordon Brown and the labour party... But people want a 'change'... Sigh. You'll get a change: you will all your jobs axxed because you simple-minded cunts voted conservative, or even the idiotic party that is currently second in command - the Liberal Democrats... Yes, this is a first - me talking politics on my blog...

I will now go through the process of assembling my book Juvenilia: An Unacknowledged Literary Prodigy together. This is a collection of my 'best' (but still quite wretched) short stories from the ages of sixteen to nineteen. I will create a blog post for it when it's ready, along with details for anyone (or more likely, no-one) who is interested in buying it...