my dearest sinister, i've neglected you, i know. i've been sneaking around with my real life, which is really far less interesting. and now i've come crawling back to you in my hour of need... right now i'm waiting to find out whether i've been selected for an interview for a master's course in england i've applied for. this is hardly relevant to anything that any of you have been talking about, except maybe the oxford interviews (great stories, by the way!). it's highly unlikely that i'll be granted this interview, for reasons including but not limited to the following: a) i'm too young b) the course is very very very selective - last year's application came back with a sticker on it that said "number 498" d) part of me really really really wants to get a place, which is a sure-fire sign that i won't get one e) i'm not that good but i'm stressing anyway. i've been drinking coffee all day and have that nasty, over-caffeinated, "i-can-feel-an-ulcer-coming-on" feeling. soon i have to call them up and say something like, "well, you people hold my future in your hands, want to share it with me? take your time" and then they will, and i'll say, oh, ok, thank you for telling me what i'll be doing for the next two and a half years of my life, and possibly the rest of it too, and i'll hang up. probably this answer will be "no", so i'll have to tell all of you as well as everyone else. and then i'll go to a party with my friends who will be waiting with bated breath to find out what my future will be. and we'll drink lots and lots. and then in a couple of days i'll get on a plane to england for the interview and if i come back it will only be for a little bit and then i'll have to move to london and my life will be there. (hello, london sinister massive!) but maybe all this whingeing is just the part of me that wants to be rejected because it's the easier option. my profession is not one that promises fame, fabulous riches, fast car, fast members of the opposite or same sex, or even superannuation... i thought i'd dealt with this during the many wintery weeks in london when the heating didn't work and i only had a pound to my name, and if i could afford enough sainsbury's economy white bread and economy baked beans then it was a good day. now i'm used to luxury, i can't cope with any more garrets, rat-infested halls of residence, polluted air and drive-by shootings and stabbings. i must be getting too old for it. (londoners, i'm sorry, don't take this the wrong way, i loved lots of things about london, just not daily life, & how important is that, in the scheme of things?) in london every day was a battle... every day i had to fight and the victories were so difficult and painful that they felt like defeats. every night i'd crawl into bed, aching all over, too exhausted to cry or even dream. is that really living? or is that just masochism? many of you are artists or art students - do any of you believe that you have to suffer for your art? do our vocations really choose us? how much free will do we then possess? would i choose to be spared, if i had any choice in the matter? Rilke (yay, Liz Daplyn & Archel, you guys have great taste in literature! i thoroughly recommend Paul Celan to you both: "with the butterflies, with the night/ let me into your slumber:/above you i am a speechless/breath that wakes...") famously wrote that to find out if you are really "called" to do anything (writing, photography, car repair), stop doing it. see how long you can hold out. if you don't ever want to go back to it, then that's OK. but if you almost lose it and have to work for reasons which you cannot fathom, then that's it, that's a calling. you must be humble, accept your burden, and structure your life around it. but many artists & art historians spent last century trying to deconstruct that idea of vocation, saying that art is a job like anything else, it isn't mystical or special, anyone can do it. i don't know who to believe. does being called necessarily mean leaving home? making sacrifices for your career? for years i hated australia, i thought the whole country was nowheresville, a one-horse town without no traffic light, and i couldn't wait to leave. it was a colonial mentality: eurocentric diffusionism. i thought that london was the centre of the universe, london was where the future happened. i thought of myself as someone who didn't belong anywhere, who felt most at home when living on the road and out of a suitcase, and where better to be that a global city, a hub city full of people who don't belong. i had a long conversation with a minicab driver from lagos. he lived like me: half the time in a tiny, run-down flat in london, half the time in a beautiful house with his beautiful nigerian wife and kids. (well, i don't have a beautiful nigerian wife or kids, but you see what i mean). he said that london was a place that people went to make money (on the stock market, temping, driving minicabs) and then they went home again and lived their real lives. at the time i didn't agree. there are communities, i said, if you know where to find them, of course there are. there are people who've lived here all their lives. but then i thought that perhaps my real life is in australia, too, and i was missing out on it. i read about a man who left tasmania to go to university. he hated australia and couldn't wait to leave. then he had to come back decades later, to pack up his parents' house after they had both died - "they slipped out of life quietly, not wanting to make a fuss." i cry every time i read that article. i read about a memoir written by an old man, who'd moved to australia when he was young. he stayed there for the rest of his life. he must have been eighty when he wrote this memoir. at the end he writes "my real life is in the north of england, with my mother. one day i will get back to it." then i dreamed i was in london, doing something utterly banal - buying a magazine in the tate britain bookshop, i think - and i had a sudden, blinding realisation that london was where i belonged and that i shouldn't have left. in the dream, that is. i woke up and for a few seconds i didn't know where i was. i don't think i can choose. i'm like a cat that wants to be let in the door and then ten seconds later is mewling and rubbing at its owner's legs to be let outside again. i have to face up to the fact that i have no idea what i want. so maybe i don't mind putting my future into the hands of some admissions clerk, somewhere, because god knows i wouldn't know what to do with it if i had it. i'd better make that phone call. love as always, Sophia XXXXXXXXXX ps how bad could life really be when my *****sinister valentine***** is on its way? _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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