28. november 2006
EXCERPT
... But first I had to undergo the torture of the so called 'best school system in the world' as claimed by politicians, and acted out by teachers on all levels, that it took me until my first and only meeting with a psychotropic substance to realize the extend of the desperation.
At my gymnasium at Öregård I overheard two teachers discussing the new school law, or rather, they agreed that the national imposition of individual assessment of all students, placing everyone in the position of actually having to compete with everyone else, rather than business as usual of 'just doing your thing the best way you could', was the worst thing that could happen to the nation, and to the people, and one of them, strangely enough a man, burst out crying outright. Must be a very sensitive thing for him, I thought, sitting outside in the hallway waiting for the trip to begin that a friend had slipped me and told me to drop, in order to 'straighten out that straight head of yours', which was how he phrased it, and being who I was, I of course set about disproving that anybody so unkempt and chaotic as him in any way could know what was good for me. At which point the lysergic acid diethylamide-25 started on my mind, because I suddenly heard not just one teacher crying, or two teachers feeling sad about being forced to evaluate their students' actual competence of living, I heard all of the teachers wail and bemoan the fact that they would have to become executioners and cutters of the threads of fate of young people, who were probably not responsible for having chosen schooling, though grossly incompetent in a majority of ways, they were the tools of politics over which they held no influence, and very few of them felt any pride in the responsibility invested in them by the democratically elect, rather, they were at a loss as how to live with themselves, once the deed was done, once the plan was in motion and everyone started adjusting to the new demands, kids dropping out, kids getting more adept at back-stabbing, rawhiding their emotions, kissing ass and doing teachers favours to get ahead, and by all I do mean all, not just the local teachers at my gymnasium, no, I felt tuned in to teachers all over the nation, it felt like taking the temperature of a gigantic hairy beast, and the temperature was rising and the beast was at a loss as to what was happening to it, it was roaring, really asking for help, but there was no one. It was totally alone in the world. And for a minute there, while I sat on the bench outside the teachers' office, the hallways deserted with teaching, I actually felt sorry for the great hairy beast, its wailing so desultory that it smacked of imminent, un-avoidable, stark lonely cessation of existence ... Yes, it was desperation! The whole nation of teachers were crying out in desperation, and maybe, maybe I was the only non-teacher or -in-the-know-person, who heard this cry for help. But at the core of my being ... all I felt was disgust!
There and then I decided to leave my home, not just my parental base, the meal ingesting and sleeping place that was my parent's 5-room apartment in Nørrebro, the latest growing-very-fashionable-with-prices-of-housing-rising-all-over-area of Copenhagen, previously home to bums, BZ'ers, unemployed first, second and third generation immigrants and artists not going anywhere in any great hurry ... but actually leave the country itself. I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would live in a place, where maternal over-protectiveness had infused itself into the national soul to such an extent that teachers, even slightly experienced like the two in the teacher's office, would balk at the task set before them, a regular paradigm shift, a challenge of Danish humanity borne anew on the shoulders of the ever first disseminators of the newest of collective knowledge and understanding!
I literally threw up.
Not the gentle, two-fingers-down-the-throat way of helping yourself rid the body of un-desired fluids or toxins, but the un-self conscious and uncontrollable vomitation, where the whole of the system feels so besotted that it has but one option: To try and expel any feeling of infestation by emptying the stomach - the visual symbolic opposite being the tiny alien popping into existence from un-acknowledged germination in the bowels and out through the chest of actor John Hurt in Alien 1.
But I didn't have that much inside of me. My physical reaction to their reaction to demand for anti-socialist breeding resulted basically in a little coffea and cake fluids from my 11 o'clock cafeteria break being spilled. Plus a lot of retching. At which point the door opened all the way and the two teachers came out to enquire about my state of health, to which I reacted with as yet un-dispelled cowardice, claiming influenza as the cause of the mess.
Respect! They saw through the lie, possibly due to ultra-dilation of my retinas, and sent me home on noted sick-leave for the remainder of the day and the next, with voiced-only concern that I not be alone until "it" went away. But honour only for not freaking out and reporting me for doing drugs on school premises - zero respect for the maternal handle on things, where every unknown is mastered by infusion of food, bed rest, or a professional of any kind. But I did go home, mentally packing and doing away with disposables and thinking about where to go, walking all the way to Nørrebro with my bicycle in one hand and drawing cognition-delay shadows in the air with the other. I locked myself in my room, a privilege hard earned from years of struggle with my mother, my father always understanding perfectly, and continued the practice of drawing shadows in the air and thinking of the countries and places I knew. Before slumbering I came to the conclusion that finding a new home would take more than just a map of the world and the CIA database of countries and regions, readily available on the net. Saying NO to things was not enough. I would have to find out how and to what to say YES.
... But first I had to undergo the torture of the so called 'best school system in the world' as claimed by politicians, and acted out by teachers on all levels, that it took me until my first and only meeting with a psychotropic substance to realize the extend of the desperation.
At my gymnasium at Öregård I overheard two teachers discussing the new school law, or rather, they agreed that the national imposition of individual assessment of all students, placing everyone in the position of actually having to compete with everyone else, rather than business as usual of 'just doing your thing the best way you could', was the worst thing that could happen to the nation, and to the people, and one of them, strangely enough a man, burst out crying outright. Must be a very sensitive thing for him, I thought, sitting outside in the hallway waiting for the trip to begin that a friend had slipped me and told me to drop, in order to 'straighten out that straight head of yours', which was how he phrased it, and being who I was, I of course set about disproving that anybody so unkempt and chaotic as him in any way could know what was good for me. At which point the lysergic acid diethylamide-25 started on my mind, because I suddenly heard not just one teacher crying, or two teachers feeling sad about being forced to evaluate their students' actual competence of living, I heard all of the teachers wail and bemoan the fact that they would have to become executioners and cutters of the threads of fate of young people, who were probably not responsible for having chosen schooling, though grossly incompetent in a majority of ways, they were the tools of politics over which they held no influence, and very few of them felt any pride in the responsibility invested in them by the democratically elect, rather, they were at a loss as how to live with themselves, once the deed was done, once the plan was in motion and everyone started adjusting to the new demands, kids dropping out, kids getting more adept at back-stabbing, rawhiding their emotions, kissing ass and doing teachers favours to get ahead, and by all I do mean all, not just the local teachers at my gymnasium, no, I felt tuned in to teachers all over the nation, it felt like taking the temperature of a gigantic hairy beast, and the temperature was rising and the beast was at a loss as to what was happening to it, it was roaring, really asking for help, but there was no one. It was totally alone in the world. And for a minute there, while I sat on the bench outside the teachers' office, the hallways deserted with teaching, I actually felt sorry for the great hairy beast, its wailing so desultory that it smacked of imminent, un-avoidable, stark lonely cessation of existence ... Yes, it was desperation! The whole nation of teachers were crying out in desperation, and maybe, maybe I was the only non-teacher or -in-the-know-person, who heard this cry for help. But at the core of my being ... all I felt was disgust!
There and then I decided to leave my home, not just my parental base, the meal ingesting and sleeping place that was my parent's 5-room apartment in Nørrebro, the latest growing-very-fashionable-with-prices-of-housing-rising-all-over-area of Copenhagen, previously home to bums, BZ'ers, unemployed first, second and third generation immigrants and artists not going anywhere in any great hurry ... but actually leave the country itself. I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would live in a place, where maternal over-protectiveness had infused itself into the national soul to such an extent that teachers, even slightly experienced like the two in the teacher's office, would balk at the task set before them, a regular paradigm shift, a challenge of Danish humanity borne anew on the shoulders of the ever first disseminators of the newest of collective knowledge and understanding!
I literally threw up.
Not the gentle, two-fingers-down-the-throat way of helping yourself rid the body of un-desired fluids or toxins, but the un-self conscious and uncontrollable vomitation, where the whole of the system feels so besotted that it has but one option: To try and expel any feeling of infestation by emptying the stomach - the visual symbolic opposite being the tiny alien popping into existence from un-acknowledged germination in the bowels and out through the chest of actor John Hurt in Alien 1.
But I didn't have that much inside of me. My physical reaction to their reaction to demand for anti-socialist breeding resulted basically in a little coffea and cake fluids from my 11 o'clock cafeteria break being spilled. Plus a lot of retching. At which point the door opened all the way and the two teachers came out to enquire about my state of health, to which I reacted with as yet un-dispelled cowardice, claiming influenza as the cause of the mess.
Respect! They saw through the lie, possibly due to ultra-dilation of my retinas, and sent me home on noted sick-leave for the remainder of the day and the next, with voiced-only concern that I not be alone until "it" went away. But honour only for not freaking out and reporting me for doing drugs on school premises - zero respect for the maternal handle on things, where every unknown is mastered by infusion of food, bed rest, or a professional of any kind. But I did go home, mentally packing and doing away with disposables and thinking about where to go, walking all the way to Nørrebro with my bicycle in one hand and drawing cognition-delay shadows in the air with the other. I locked myself in my room, a privilege hard earned from years of struggle with my mother, my father always understanding perfectly, and continued the practice of drawing shadows in the air and thinking of the countries and places I knew. Before slumbering I came to the conclusion that finding a new home would take more than just a map of the world and the CIA database of countries and regions, readily available on the net. Saying NO to things was not enough. I would have to find out how and to what to say YES.
