Confessions of a Subway Worker

I am very naïve. It was this naïveté that led me to take up a part time job in a Subway, as though they owed me something. As though my age and relative inexperience wouldn't automatically qualify me as 'kitchen bitch' both in terms of wages and workload. Put it this way, I'd have to work for almost an hour just to be able to afford the bus fare home... I lived less than 5 minutes away. 

I know that there are a multitude of teenagers and twenty-somethings working the night-shift in a dead end job, bleary eyed over the rim of their coffee cup and hoping for a little more satisfaction. But that doesn't make it okay. 

What I really have a problem with is the inflated sense of superiority that Subway customers seem to have. I may resemble a giant bogey in my lurid green 'meal deal' t-shirt but I'm also a straight A student applying to university. Just because I work in food service doesn't meant that I don't deserve to be treated with any less respect that if I were the Queen of England (I should probably be treated with more respect, I bet Queenie never had to scrub out a toilet). 

But really it's pretty hypocritical of me to complain of misguided superiority and then try and justify my own. Does the fact that I'm applying to university really make me any better than my cohorts who aren't? By working here I have been exposed to people who have suffered more heartbreak and sadness than you would ever care to think about. That kind of sadness that makes your bones ache and your chest wonder if you'll ever breathe normally again. I've met people who work until stupid-o'clock just to avoid the war zone that they have to come home to. How can my paper-thin qualifications match up to such integrity?

 I am blessed in that I have met people who wake up every morning with the blackest cloud hanging over their heads, yet they can keep going and going. No matter how many customers sneer at them or how much their managers under-pay them: they'll be there, plastering on a smile over the jagged cracks of their souls, offering their sincerest apologies for putting the wrong sauce on your sandwich when last night their boyfriend cheated on them and they haven't slept since. 

Perhaps if people took the time to gain a little perspective and stopped trying to pigeonhole people based on their job, maybe we'd stop spitting in your food when you weren't looking. 

Murakami on Mental Illness

Having just finished Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, I feel that I have to write about his portrayal of mental illness. There are few books that give an accurate representation of mental illnesses, many authors succumb to stereotypes and stigmas which somewhat blackens the characterisation of the sufferers that they have otherwise built up. Murakami never explicitly references the specific mental illnesses that he inflicts upon his characters and in doing so, he does not adhere to tropes generally applied to mental illness sufferers in literature - hence his ambiguity enhances his writing. Viewed from the perspective of a compassionate outsider rather than an almost anti-septic psychoanalyst, he allows his characters to be understood as people rather than as the walking embodiment of their diseases. The book's prevailing message - regarding the past's involvement in shaping the future, the representation of time as perfectly linear (never accommodating for clean breaks) and the portrayal of love as something that smashes every presentiment you've ever held about it - is underpinned by mental illness, its effects on both the sufferer and the observer.

The book's structure ensures that you never see those suffering as anything other than ordinary, for me I felt that Murakami was making the point that we are all deeply flawed human beings, each with a unique past that has forced us to grow up to be the people that we are; yet some of these flaws are perceived as 'wrong' and some are viewed as acceptable, rather than viewing these flaws objectively as flaws, we feel the need to categorise society into 'them' and 'us' - 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Murakami is definitely not a lazy writer, he has taken it upon himself to portray complex characters with their own individual idiosyncrasies and it is this that ensures that his characters are not defined by their illnesses. They are instead portrayed as people who simply feel the consequences of the burdens they have had to bear, each manifesting itself in a different manner... because no portrayal is flat, they are not stereotypes, they are people who are suffering yet coping as best as they can. Unfortunately, there is a futility that manifests itself in this portrayal, no character appears able to fully recover from their individual sufferings, there is a serious question raised about courage: is courage being able to end your suffering for yourself or is courage being able to carry on through the flames?

This futility is a frightening thought when one comes back to Murakami's philosophy that we are all inherently flawed and individually haunted by the shortcomings of our past. He explores the limits of mortality when faced with individual integrity and for me it's a beautifully accurate representation of the human psyche - both contradictory and conformist, uniform and unique. That may sound cliché but the duality and idiosyncrasy that runs through his narrative means that I can confidently affirm this as truth.

The Beat Gen: My Issue

It's pretty much part of the job description that as an English student you must devour books, dissect them and compartmentalise them into your own psyche. I think I can say that this is quite an accurate description of myself, books give me the best kind of shivers. However, as one develops both as a person and as a student, there are certain books that are great to re-visit with a greater understanding of the context and an increased perceptivity. There are also some books that once re-visited, are somewhat desecrated and cannot be held up to the light anymore without seeing the gaping flaws within them.

A year and a half ago, I fell in love with the Beat Generation. I still have a book of Allen Ginsberg poetry with every line analysed in painstaking detail, I would listen to Jack Kerouac's haikus night after night, trying to create my own that matched the style of his cultural appropriation. My DVDs of Howl and Kill Your Darlings are lovingly scratched due to over-use. As a naïve 16 year old, I was nothing like the twisted cynic I am today: I loved the call to revolution, the controversy and the intimacy between them that was felt deeply within their poetry. 

Fast-forward to the present and after months of re-reading and cramming for university interviews, making sure I knew all the books on the English Lit spec back-to-front and generally not having a great deal of time to read for fun - I decided I'd re-visit my old friends and start reading William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch. 

Honestly, so disappointing. After basically unmasking Allen Ginsberg as a phoney for coursework, I knew that I wouldn't hold the Beats in such high esteem ever again, but I was hoping to at least enjoy the book despite this. I must say, it's very clever in some respects. Very clever that a book explicitly about drug abuse can give the impression of taking you on one big trip due to the lack of any coherent structure or sometimes even syntax. Whether deliberate or not, it's the one positive I can take out of the book. 

Unfortunately, its structural brilliance does not make up for the lack of any coherent plot or character development. Though it can be said that this is in-keeping with the mood of the book itself, it feels like laziness to me. Laziness or a simple desire to be renowned for being as outrageously controversial as possible, without any concessions but simple notoriety. Therefore one must question the irony of a sub-culture that so opposes capitalism, consumerism and materialism being so quick to write for capitalist gains. 

The book is supposed to be a sort of terror-filled, dystopian nightmare, recounting the world's vices and repressions and exploring how they would function on a mass scale. Unfortunately, it feels as though Burroughs runs out of ideas a quarter of the way through and therefore resorts to repeating himself and his characterisation  despite having one of the least restrictive writing styles I've ever come across. The book feels like controversy for controversy's sake but has little intrinsic merit, it's sort of tainted my judgement of te Beats as a whole and that makes me really sad.

Sure I can still read On The Road or Pull My Daisy and enjoy the stylistic features and political commentary buried within their works, unfortunately I can't help feeling in the back of my mind that not a single one of them can honestly say they stand by their convictions. 

2 minute writing exercise - 9:48pm

We weren't prepared for when Adonis would fall

And black ice would encumber every journey

When our apex sighed into itself

And tried to curl around a wisp of smoke

Left to smoulder in the empty fruit bowl

Of our golden kitchen-top heydays

If me and Anais Nin were friends

I wish you'd forgotten Sunday
And cracked the glass of
The gilt picture frame
Depicting you; seven, red ribbon
Bruised knees.

Reflecting me, old, dungarees,
Shit taste.

I wish you'd cut your hair so short
That I could feel all the knobbles of your skull
And imagine how your smelled
Whilst we muddled through
Tripping over feigned cool

Clenched fingers at Communist rallies
"Statement" art: glitter glued condoms,
leopard skin and desecrated Manet prints

I don't know what kind of statement we were trying to make.

How I would like to go

It tasted like good wine
As he rolled it over his tongue
Inscrutable experience stood to attention
And dug its trenches within the lines of his face

Remembering the name of our mistakes
The candelabra and her grandfather clock

The lake glowed pink under a renaissance sky
Over lowered shoulders and shaking hands
With unstoppable, indomitable courage
It was coming

What Remained

Jack's thick blue shirt
Huddled in the corner
Crumpled under the weight
Of the memories lining its pockets

Your jewellery box
Slurred its words
Gasping over the premise
Of unfulfilled treasure

My photo album, arms folded
Leaning against the dresser
Each yellowing snapshot
Slightly missed the mark

Whilst the memory of the tulips blooms
Its subjects cannot help their decay

An open letter to my friend Instagram

I feel I'm one of many teenagers who desperately need to prioritize, I feel as though people within my age group find this particularly hard because we're at that stage where it feels we're suddenly being pushed out of the nest and dog tagged with things called "responsibilities". 

It's glaringly obvious to me that social media needs to be forced down my list of priorities, I get a shaky, seasick kinda feeling when I think about the hours of my life I've wasted watching cats doing stupid stuff and reading "10 things every Londoner understands" and the like, despite the fact that I do not nor have ever lived in London. 

The most ridiculous form of social media that I admit to using - in my opinion - is definitely Instagram. Don't get me wrong, conceptually it's pretty flawless, a website intended for sharing pictures you have taken with you iPhone, who doesn't want to marvel at the fact that a picture as beautiful as that can be captured without photoshop or fancy lenses on DSLR cameras? It's the way in which this concept has been altered that grinds my gears, it has become a form of social media when I don't think that was ever the intention, the intention being - in my eyes - a mobile form of things like Flickr, making professional standard photography and photo sharing accessible to those who don't have all the gimmicks. 

Instagram can be pretty detrimental in my eyes, like all social media, it has become a form of one upmanship: who can "out-selfie" their friends? Whose weekend looked the most exciting behind that smokescreen of filters and clever angles? It's become a competition, as if the number of likes you get determines your worth as a human being. Like you aren't worth so much more than that, like your charm, passion and inner-strength don't mean more than a bunch of numbers on a picture of your cat. Like the way the sunlight hits your face on a morning and the chime of your laughter isn't far more beautiful than any "no make-up selfie". 

Of course, I'm not going to pretend I don't use it, social media is renowned for being addictive and enticing. Not to mention the fact that the prevailing paradox of our society (this term + that context = me cringing) is that not to conform is also to conform. But the reshuffle within my ministerial cabinet of priorities has proved time and again that I don't NEED Instagram, why do I need to seek validation from strangers through a screen? Why do I need validation at all?

Instagram, it's been great, but it's time we cooled things off. I'm narcissistic and psychopathic enough without you.  

2 minute writing exercise - 22:32pm

You can't connect the dots
Because you have forgotten Sunday
You are that papered ribbon of a moment
When you wake up and forget who you are.

And the coffee-scented sunrise catching his dusty eyelids
Doesn't make the breath catch in your throat
Any more. The imagery's turned stale.
Your camera's out of film.

On being a hungover romantic

There's a pile of translations, essay plans and wider reading sizing me up from across the room, I don't want to befriend it today. Today is one of Hello Kitty pyjamas and stories with words so perfectly placed that they give me shivers. 

For once I felt I was doing things I considered more important. Like analysing the cadence of laughter as it drifts through smoky air at 4am, assessing the sweet, fusty smell of last night that clings to the static of your clothes. Hearing the rain pelt the windscreen so hard that I thought it might shatter because in my rosé-haze, we were driving towards the end of the earth.

*** I haven't written prose for years but I found a scrap of paper in my desk drawer with the opening two sentences on and I felt really inspired ***

...And all that happened was that it imminently dawned upon me that you can't find solace in a single person, nor can you seek completion in something as incomplete as yourself. The metallic bite of this statement lingered in my mouth as I lay, defeated.

That had been the whole point of this adventure; discovery of self, self-sufficiency etc etc etc until I begin to sound like an upper-class art student who is "just so damn oppressed by this capitalist haven". But, with only twenty dollars left in my battered jeans, I realised that I'd spent a stupid amount of money pretending I was Jack Kerouac, forgetting in my excitement that my life was not a novel.

I laughed to recall the lonely motel nights, surfing the web for cool things to do in whatever city I'd happened to end up in, then sighing and watching a straight-to-DVD movie, trying to find poetic meaning in the static of the cable channel. Trying to avoid my own company as the walls stared back, blank with apathy and the sunlight reluctantly crept in, worrying that it had disturbed the perfect "woe-is-me" cliché that I had created.

For alas, no police stations did I sit tempestuously in, cold coffee and panda eyes. No buses did I flirt my way onto for free. I learned a lot about independence... I'm grateful to myself for that, but I also learned that as much as you may want to, you cannot crawl back inside yourself to escape from the ghosts that hide in the canvas metropolis of your soul. I discovered that I wasn't trying to find myself at all, I was trying to lose myself amongst neon glares and catcalls and kamikaze bars... I almost succeeded.

However. When I least expected it, feeling the epitome of smug liberation, the essence of who I am would creep back to me across sticky nightclub floors. The least gentle reminder of the jigsaw puzzle pieces I had strewn from bar to flat to cab to park. The "burnt-coffee" smell of realisation that I was actually just as dependent, flawed and insecure as everybody else who pretended they were ok being alone. But that's fine.

When your plans with friends turn to shit - UNFINISHED

We pass through dusk, nonchalant shoulders tilted
Too soon, the colour drains from the street
Extremist pamphlets reign upon your shutters
The house longs for new friends.

The night makes the floorboards creak.
Anticipating, we turn to dust
Whilst the ghost face of the wind
Meets our rattling window panes

We become ash-grey
Skin bouncing off moonlight
Radiating hollowed eyes and hair,
Transformed into a mass of sleeplessness curls.

And so we sit, 2am
Devoured by expectation
Drinking tea
Listening to the flicker
Of black and white film

Innocence//Experience

"

If I were able to count using
Every cell on my burning skin
I still could not count
The number of times
That I have thrown myself
In a purposeless heap
Onto your unwashed bedsheets

Nor could I count
The number of times that
I have gagged on the porcelain crotch
Of the toilet bowl
The shower blasting
To conceal my moans

There are multitudes of
“3:35am and I don’t know what I’m doing with my life”
They creep behind my shuttered lids
Whilst I shiver in the unheated box
Of my cold water flat
They refuse to rise and be counted

Really, who could blame them.

"

Ode to My Shrinking Friend

“

You’ve been living too fast recently my dear and I hate being the one who helps you out of some stranger’s funky smelling bed sheets, who forces you to look in the mirror, forces you to look past the fading eye make up and bed head and to look at your sunken cheeks, the lack of vitality - or even feeling - in your eyes.

And I know it’s hard because we all want to squeeze ourselves into a life different from our own and convince someone enigmatic and mysterious that we are equally enigmatic and mysterious.

And I know you hate who you are when you’re strewn amongst last night’s abandoned hopes with your dress hitched up around your hips and some guy telling you to shut up because your crying turns him off.

And I know it’s hard to be yourself when you loathe who you are but I love you. And I want you to let me in and allow me to neutralise this acid that corrodes your biting heart and I need you to let me soothe those singe marks left upon the delicate fibres of your soul, the artwork of people who aren’t even worth a second glance.

So for one night, throw away your inhibitions and come roll down hilltops with me and we’ll swing in the playground and dance furiously to High School Musical like we used to at school discos, dizzy and giggling because 9 o'clock felt like the end of the earth. Hell, I miss seeing that smile.

”

Tree

“Tree, I stand.

Abandoned by square shaped eyes
Burning with apathy
The flickering ‘grams
And the deep curl of bass
Thundering down oil slicked flagstones.

Tree.
No feet caress your proud carriage
That carried, life
Into the lungs of those
With the fairy dust eyes
And the sleep shuffled hair
Sitting by the glare
Of flickering picture
Neurone destroyer”