Level: Entry
Summer is here. The university year is over and, for me, that means university is over. So what’s next?
I write this having just come back from a beautiful, sunny weekend in my hometown, celebrating birthdays, the Summer Solstice and seeing friends. The first day back in Plymouth was okay - a little chilly compared to what it’s just been, but warm enough for me to take an evening sea swim. My current sea-objective is to see how far I can swim after jumping off a pontoon. Although, I’m no coastal bird. It was just warm enough to sit on the steps of The Hoe afterwards and read some more Fahrenheit 451 whilst a thin microfibre towel hugged my damp back and shoulders. I read about a machine dog with eight legs and Montag’s fear as he passes it. It hunts him. It detests him. Montag is prey.
That’s when a boy - around 17 I’d guess - cheers and runs over to his friends, reeling up my eyes from the pages of 451. He’s caught a fish. A big one. It writhes in his hands. I imagine its gills shriveling in the dry wind. It looks like a catfish from where I’m seated, but I could be very wrong. I’m not like the marine biologists here, I don’t listen to Plymouth Sound too much. The boy shouts that they have dinner for tonight and proceeds to look for something sharp. Two boys go down to the pebbles - revealed by the low tide - and scavenge for a blade-ish rock or bit of driftwood. They’re called back by a girl who announces they’ve found a knife.
I return to 451. Behind me, there’s the sound of a plastic bag shifting in snappy movements. It’s a distinct sound when you live around seagulls. Their beaks jump at plastic. Another bird flies in and I turn to see a few more than I expected. They shriek in their caws. More fly in. The performative stoic I am, I sit still and continue to read. I imagine that Hitchock’s The Birds is coming true, but that I am somehow above the victims in that film. In my mind, I apply the philosophy that if I don’t fear them, they won’t hurt me. And they don’t. But, that doesn’t stop me tidying my things and leaving after a few minutes.
Then we arrive at today. Heavy cloud and overcast keeps the carpark outside my window quiet. With people, that is. The cars always accumulate. I’m at my desk, hanging grey over a laptop as I read the “unfortunately” and “on this occasion” lazy wording of several parttime job dispensers. Having seen this a few dozen times now, I’m beginning to question what value I even hold in this world. If I can get a degree but not a job as a shop-floor sales assistant, I feel like my level of use and desire is on par with a seashell with a hole through its top. I would try get a degree-relevant role, but seeing “entry level” followed by “3 years experience required” makes me want to grind my teeth on said seashell. I question what kind of society we’re in. One where the jobs are getting steeper and the cost to exist is too. Capital demands you to present with a stacked wallet in the areas of money, wellbeing and sociability before you can even be allowed to poke the doormat of a chimney-sweep employment company. The machine dog is coded against us.
There I go, moaning.
You know, for a long time I’ve theorised that crying is hope. I got the idea from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘Grief’ and its line ‘hopeless grief is passionless’. Having experienced grief myself, I thought “yes, true that”. We, according to I, cry because when we do so, we are hoping that in some shape or form, the universe will here our desires and show us at least some blurry corner of the thing we are looking for. If you don’t hope that something will change when you cry, you won’t cry.
So here I am, crying in a blog. Because, writing it - telling it to even one other person who reads this - means that the universe might just shift - releasing me from its catch - and let my gills breath in the working world.