The park bench could use a paint job. Maybe even a good sanding as well, but Cameron likes feeling the history of a bench beneath the weight of him. And so there he sits. Though the splinters really were insufferable. ‘To fully immerse oneself in life is to suffer the ugly and uncomfortable with stoicism’. Using his favourite fountain pen he scratches these words into the well-crafted pages of his moleskin journal. Smiling, he wonders if this is how Wilde must have felt in his twenties. Most definitely, he concludes. You see, Cam believes with everything that he has, to the tip of his tasteful trilby hat, that future historians would be distraught to be denied the opportunity to pick apart the inner workings of his brilliant mind. A light breeze blows, disrupting the pages of his journal for a moment, the price tag catching the early spring light, proudly displaying the fact that he coughed up seventy-five euro last month to document… what exactly? Ah here we go, arms lifted above his head as he breathes in the campus life, feels it in his lungs, the anticipation of the day at hand. A day that will blur into yesterday and will of course then bleed over into all the near identical tomorrows, that is until graduation seven months from now. A shiny new English lit degree tucked under his brown-buckled belt. He begins, as he begins everything in life, with unfounded confidence.
Daily log 2/03/23:
9:00am: Modernism tutorial ( Allow the T.A to ramble for a bit, explain the proper use of the term free indirect discourse)
1:00pm: Quick M and S café stop for lunch with Thea (describe my diss thesis to her again, this time in more detail, but make it simple so she understands, invite myself over to her flat for drinks this evening)
3:00pm: Work on my novella
3:30pm: Greek Duolingo session for 15 mins
4:30pm: Call father (ask him to rev me my weekly allowance a day early)
6:00pm: Glass of Pinot at the campus pub with Joey and the boys.
9:30pm: Make way over to Thea’s.
His pen, finally coming to a rest, indeed exhausted by the pretentiousness of its owner, only to quickly find itself between said owners artificially white teeth, squeaks out a sigh. A series of sharp squeals, like the sound of a primary school classroom when the home time bell signals for chairs to scrape desperately at vinyl, interrupts his journaling. The depth of the crease which appears between the boy’s brows suggests this interruption is being received as a great personal slight. He looks around, his eyes screaming accusation and profanity, his neck straining as unused muscles pulled taut (Cam rarely bothered to look anywhere but straight ahead, tempted only to turn his gaze where a reflective surface catches his eye).
Finally, he comes to understand the intrusion on his scene and his mouth settles into a firm, unimpressed line. A woman had been walking her golden retriever through the rugby field to the left of the student on the bench. Just passing through, a shortcut to her favourite coffee shop. As she bent to swiftly remove something from the dog’s mouth, a frisbee sliced through the air just above her hair, tousling the silver of it faintly. Its startling combination with the bright sunlight made it difficult for Cameron to discern whether she had been caught in the crossfire or not. The near miss had caused the perpetrators to gasp and shriek and splutter, shortly followed by a scattering of nervous laughter, their hands flinging to their mouths. Now shouting apology after apology in an embarrassed lament, the woman waves off their distress, laughs and stumbles into a seated crouch on the grass to catch her breath. They all gather in the middle of the green space, the students lowering themselves one by one to the dogs’ level for a turn scratching behind his grateful ears. They seemed then surrounded by a warmth that Cam couldn’t understand. The sun was sharp and cold where it hit off of his glasses, so how could it follow that just metres away life went on in such a soft and easy way. The scene had been perfect before, Cam was ignoring the splitters, his back-aching, plus that hollow feeling that always crops up around the midday mark which has him running to his journal in the first place. These strangers had overstepped. Cam feels a tug at his chest, feeling vulnerable and small.
The buzz of them all growing louder causes Cam to sneer and roll his eyes. He didn’t relish trivial interruptions when he was thinking. ‘Ridiculous, shallow, unimportant’, he thought to jot down hastily after a glance at his watch alarmed him to the fact that it was five to the hour and he had a tutorial at 9. Standing up lazily from the bench, Cam brushes the flecks of paint away that have stuck to the corduroy of his trousers. In the same movement he swings his bag across his body and makes his way, all intention and purposeful strides, up the cobblestoned campus. He holds his journal with extreme casualty to his chest. Its price tag reflected by the fluorescent ceiling lights above announces his presence loudly when he finally enters his tutorial, just as the hand on his watch hits 9:15. It needn’t have been so loud, “So sorry everyone”. He cuts off a student’s response to the T.A. as he enters, projecting his voice. He waves his journal in one hand and runs his hand through his hair with the other in a practised move of perfect dishevelment. He then puts on a ruminating half-smile so his next line will hang in the air as profoundly cryptic, “I was lost in my own head”. A collective sigh.
