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On the first day of my adult life, George W. Bush took office for the second time with fanfare and pomp and what he called "capital"; at any rate, he was president by a mandate greater than the slimmest majority on the Supreme Court and he said, "I've earned capital... and I'm going to spend it."
The rest, I guess, is not just my history.
Almost four years later, I have spent the day in G&Ds on the Cowley Road, drinking coffee and chai and supposedly working on involuntary manslaughter, whilst they play a playlist that is probably entitled "Iona, Here Are Your Teenage Years" (I mean, seriously, they played the Goo Goo Dolls, "Slide" - a song I played into oblivion in 2003, and as such to me, connotes Sirius/Remus) and then meant to do some more work in the evening but ended up watching Being Human with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sebastienne (it's awful and fantastic; if you're missing Merlin, like we were, it's just what you've been looking for!) and trying and failing to eat actual food.
Now - I don't know what to say. Four years later, I think the world is a worse place than it was on the day I turned eighteen. The Iraq War was only one year old then; it seems ancient as dead things now. The 7/7 bombings happened within a few months. Hurricane Katrina happened when I was nineteen. I went to school and got good grades and went to university and got a degree. Unlike last time, the future is not a closed book; I know where I'll be a year from now, probably right here on this chair, probably, with the same clock on the wall. Four years from now is less clear, but there's more direction in my life. And there's a sweetness to that, too. I like plans, I like having somewhere to go and someone to be. When I was twenty-one years and ten months old, I was sitting here on this sofa at five o'clock in the morning, drunk and overemotional and crying at the man on the television who just got up and told billions of people that he was a liberal, and he was proud of himself and them. He has plans.
I was born at 12.05am; I am turning twenty-two in a perfectly quiet house. The housemates have all gone to bed,sebastienne has left me with a package to be opened after midnight, Small Cat has fallen asleep in a fit of pique after I told her she smelled. It's perfectly quiet and in Liverpool, it's snowing. I love this, the silence before a whole new world.
The rest, I guess, is not just my history.
Almost four years later, I have spent the day in G&Ds on the Cowley Road, drinking coffee and chai and supposedly working on involuntary manslaughter, whilst they play a playlist that is probably entitled "Iona, Here Are Your Teenage Years" (I mean, seriously, they played the Goo Goo Dolls, "Slide" - a song I played into oblivion in 2003, and as such to me, connotes Sirius/Remus) and then meant to do some more work in the evening but ended up watching Being Human with
sebastienne (it's awful and fantastic; if you're missing Merlin, like we were, it's just what you've been looking for!) and trying and failing to eat actual food.Now - I don't know what to say. Four years later, I think the world is a worse place than it was on the day I turned eighteen. The Iraq War was only one year old then; it seems ancient as dead things now. The 7/7 bombings happened within a few months. Hurricane Katrina happened when I was nineteen. I went to school and got good grades and went to university and got a degree. Unlike last time, the future is not a closed book; I know where I'll be a year from now, probably right here on this chair, probably, with the same clock on the wall. Four years from now is less clear, but there's more direction in my life. And there's a sweetness to that, too. I like plans, I like having somewhere to go and someone to be. When I was twenty-one years and ten months old, I was sitting here on this sofa at five o'clock in the morning, drunk and overemotional and crying at the man on the television who just got up and told billions of people that he was a liberal, and he was proud of himself and them. He has plans.
I was born at 12.05am; I am turning twenty-two in a perfectly quiet house. The housemates have all gone to bed,
sebastienne has left me with a package to be opened after midnight, Small Cat has fallen asleep in a fit of pique after I told her she smelled. It's perfectly quiet and in Liverpool, it's snowing. I love this, the silence before a whole new world.