The Twentysomething's Prayer

Oh Lord, who lies somewhere  

(who probably isn't there), 

Save us.

Save us from alarm clocks 

that enact tragedy

and march us into our showers with megaphones made for camps. 

Save us from the ghosts of housemates

who are announced only by the opening and closing of doors,

whose T.V. peace is disturbed by our loud weird taste in music,
who keep us awkward when they argue with their partner about when to do the laundry, where to go on holiday and why he posted naked pictures of himself on the Internet.

Save us from the estate agents 

who never call us back,

who sit in plastic offices in polyester suits with polystyrene coffee cups plotting the downfall of the young.

Save us from the T.V. nobody truly watches but somehow manages to be passively seen in a half-glimpsed haze by millions.

Save us from the pictures of everyone
who is having a better time than us.  

Save us from the sex 
which we make to mean nothing
and which personally I think isn't really for me.  

And save us

finally

from ourselves.

For we know not what we do,

we don't know where we're going,

don't know who we'll live with next year.

We can't be sure we'll ever fuck again,

fall in love again,

write draw read scrawl scribble scrape again.

We don't know what we're having for dinner tonight. 

   

For confused is your name,

and you can keep your Kingdom

and the Power

and the Glory,

as long as in return

we gain the knowledge

that we will never stay the same

and also never change.     

Chris James Hall October 29 2012

Work

 I have a full time job. I thought I would put that out there straight away so that there's no confusion. So there will definitely no very correctly righteous desperation of "AAAAH I JUST LEFT UNIVERSITY AND NOW I LIVE WITH MY PARENTS". I had this feeling of desperate panicking numbness...for a month. Then I kind of accidentally got a full time job, which I have now been at for over a year. So, uh, yay me?

I don't want to linger on this matter too much, because I'm you don't want to read about someone who managed to obtain employment after graduating. The reason I bring it up though, is because work is so perennially odd. It's not quite the getting up early, which sucks of course. It's crazy that I spent the 15 years of schooling getting up early in the morning so I could catch some rickety countryside bus driven by someone who looked like they crawled into life from a primordial swamp made of nicotine and resentment, but 3 years of university life and BOOM suddenly all that good practice of waking up is GONE, lost in a haze of alcohol, Youtube videos and gaming forums.

I think the oddest thing about a job, is that no matter what responsibilities are given or put upon me, there is always the nagging at the back of my head that this is not my work. I spent three years becoming a bachelor of arts (And parts, and hearts; thank you Byron), and now I work in scientific publishing, which I suppose in another example of life's little absurdities. But yeah, there is this sense that very little of what I do is mine. There is a flipside though, I help science get itself out there, leave the roost and help spread knowledge about stuff that, honestly, I didn't understand to begin with.

It is for this reason why I have worked out (for I am so wise and even though I don't have a beard, if I did, it would be one of those long ones worn by ancient Kung Fu masters in Tarantino films) that the only way that I can feel like I am not lost in a labyrinthe of working, eating, shitting and masturbating, is to somehow find the time to do my own work. So this is part of that, as is my poetry, the novel I have just begun, the article I need to revise and all of those other little things lodged in my brain.

There is work, which is cool. But there is also The Work, which is essential because it is mine and yours. Getting paid for it? Eh. People seeing it? I guess so. But doing it? That may be the only way to keep going.