One hundred!

So here it is: a historic, landmark moment in my burgeoning career; my one-hundredth 'post', 'blog', 'vent', whatever you want to call it. Grab your bassoons, coral the trumpeters, and herald in a new age of diatribe. I can't help but feel this is a slightly anti-climax, I'm thinking that there aren't any flags, there are no petite virgins prostrating themselves at my feet as I amble through the crowd-strewn glories of imperial-intellectual conquest; there are no children crying on their mothers' shoulders, basking in my eminent radiance; no men slitting open their own throats at the inconsequentiality they feel as I pass them by; no dogs frolicking at my feet (probably good, I would stamp on them), and no passers-by breaking down in uncontrolled hysteria at the magnificence they were privy to. Instead, I sit here completely alone, venting my own idealised unrealities, starting listlessly at the slice of suburbia outside of my window; sipping regularly from my pepsi max; lamenting the day which rolls round in under nine hours; the forthcoming start to a new week, a new opportunity lost before it has started. No, I sit here, passably interesting in my ideological liturgy, taking a vacant interest in the issues that are shaping our world, and some of the ones that aren't shaping anything; religiously trying to tackle humanitarian travesties, ignorant crimes against humanity, the blind leading the blind, sexuality, travel, prose, poetry, news, topical affairs, and my own soliloquising. And, yet, what have I achieved? There is no clichéd catharsis in the putting of finger to keyboard; none of the metareal connection you feel when you write in longhand. All there is are the feelings of emptiness, of unwavering obstinacy as you try in vein to bring a libertarian, apathetic attitude towards more than a single-digit collective. Weeks spent trying to come up with interesting new ideas, trying to engage with a new branch of society; hours spent trying to find words - not because I've run out of things to say, but because I've run out of words. Intellectually stilted, fruitlessly searching for just a moment of poignancy; overawed by the eloquence and grace other authors can vest into mere sentences; no, not for me, where there's a want, there's a way; but if there's a long-way, I'd rather have that. Circumnavigating the muddy waters of the proverbial swamp, digging up antediluvian vocabulary merely for my own entertainment. Marginalising any possible interest through elitist patois. Wishing for a sign that something, someone, somewhere was even a little affected by what it is that I am saying; by the messages of equality and kinship that I try to make latent throughout my spleening. Nothing is selfless, everything is premeditated. I always wanted to get a readership, it's contrived and pathetic, I know, but I wanted a validation, I want some self-confidence, words and ideals you cannot glean from unresponsive, unaware, un-fucking-there readership. Don't misinterpret; this is not my triumphant (or not) valedictory speech, I do not consider myself vainglorious enough to tow a line of self-importance. Attempting for humility is the hardest thing to do, it all feels trite and forced: hollow utterances rephrased and altered into a semblance of modesty. Only the greats can traverse the internalisation of fears and self-loathing. For the moderately talented amateur it's merely another platform for grandstanding and displays of fallacy. And therein lies the rub of what I am saying: writing is not this observation into the sublime consciousness of the author; what lies beneath is merely a vacuum, absorbing all creativity and originality. The semblance of the idea lost owing to a deficit of talent on the authors' part. Ideas lost in the mists of obscurity, of confusing language and irrelevant, prosaic structure; ideas which inside felt like they could be brilliant, are soon shown obtuse and infantile as soon as rationality is applied. These ideals of the pensive writer are splayed out for any passing criticiser to fawn over; but, for most, there will be no criticism. There will be no reception. This thought that writing helps us overcome our biggest worries and fears; our trepidations at the change that is affecting us all: it's true, writing does help, but only when you can externalise those questions you have inside. Being unable to voice those desires, those feelings, those anonymous murmurings, it's merely another stick on the pile; fruitless searching for recognition and presence. Formless ideas destroyed by a shaky, ill-trained, unused hand. Questing clumsily, struggling to force that fucking idea from the back of your mind, to the forefront; blessed with imagination for ten, and talent of one, the mind is ill-suited to displaying the cognisance it knows it has. Whether it's a middling self-efficacy, or a lack of talent, I am unsure. Based on my insecurities and lack of knowledge, I'd plump with the second. On and on and on we write, blithely ignoring any semblance of reality; the sadomasochistic pleasure in loathsome writing, our hollow consolation, our security; our reality. There sits the unswerving guiding light for the weak-willed, weak-effected penman: the self-aggrandizing, unwavering, unquestioning belief that what we dress up as ineffective dross, that the product we critique so mercilessly, that that result is not how we view it; and that we don't view it like that. The mind lays pretence, subverts the truth of its own uselessness, guiding you down this path of self-pity and melancholy failures; all the time, the subconscious maintains the luminary talent you perceive in yourself.

There you go.