18 November 2004
anguish and abandonment... horray!
Just what you need when you're sixteen and it's raining and your bus was late and nobody loves you anyway and why is the world such a mess and there's no money left for a doughnut and....I bet my students just love me and my early-morning Sartre lessons. 'So, Sophie, what do you think about the anguished realisation of your own pitiful freedom in the wake of the death of all meaning?' -
'Can I go to the loo, miss?'
We were born to run, by the way, a capacity whose cultivation is clearly crucial in Britain, what with all those horrendous fast-paced predators on the prowl (alien big cats! alien big cats!). When I was an avid reader of Fortean Times (fer sure, there was no girl cooler than me in the whole of Wiltshire), it seemed that every patch of wasteland and forest in the whole country was teeming with beasts ready to tear you (and your camera) apart. But now I realise this was probably down to the impoverished range of Fortean occurrences in Britain. I see now they've actually got some quite fun stuff in there, articles on Lovecraft, for example (should the Hyperstition kru come across this), and yes, of course, yet more pieces about mysterious yeti-type creatures and Australasian big cats....
Anyway, back to teaching. The religious studies lot get to do the cosmological argument today, and I promise I won't mention anything about any supposed link between genetics and faith.
