Depressaholic: Part 2

At University Tony had studied combined English and American studies. He had a quiet and deep passion for both and for literature, history, culture and art in general. In the writings of the Brontes or the poetry of Poe he found a purity and an elegance, that was a solace, an escape from all the soul crushing doom and misery that the real world presented for him.

His mind and soul had come alive at the university. The lowly tyranny of his school days had been replaced by an environment in which intelligence and calm wisdom were respected. By and large he had quietly admired and liked his lecturers. They were cool-headed, thoughtful, and had a deep passion for their subjects; they revelled in the wonders of literature, in the delights of poetry, in the tragedy of history, and in their lectures they transmitted this enthusiasm, quietly, calmly yet passionately to their students.

The sense of freedom and liberality at the university was like balm to Tony’s soul, and in such an atmosphere, where independent thinking and motivation were encouraged, he revelled. No one was on your back, you were left to your own devices. And under such circumstances he felt relaxed and studied hard, opening up his mind to all knowledge.

He loved the large lecture theatres where they would sit and listen as say Dr Woodthorpe a wizened little white haired academic in a grey tweed jacket, would calmly and passionately tell them of Hardy or Lawrence or Shelley; enthusiastic, deeply knowledgeable, expansive and thorough, he would speak of their lives, their literature, how the two interacted; and he possessed withal such a fine sense and love of history, that say, he seemed exalted and delighted by the fact that at the battle of Trafalgar, Nelson, when dyeing, had begged of one of his men ‘kiss me Hardy, I am dyeing’ and this was in fact Thomas Hardy’s cousin; or that Black Elk and a cohort of Sioux Indians, should, after skirmishing with the likes of Custer in the great plains of America, land up one day in London town, home to Queen Victoria, Dickens, and the Elephant man. The charm of such kisses of history was never lost even on the most dullest of students. At such times they were spell bound by their lecturer’s words. The lecturers were such refined, calm individuals. And such great teachers.

He could recall sitting on an evening in his solitary room, bare, plain, undecorated and monastic, his garret as he called it, and sitting by the lamp light, in the dark, quiet, calm of evening on a Wednesday night, reading the magnificent Huckleberry Finn and interspersing it with a small but excellent volume on the last days of the Sioux nation. It was such a compelling story, full of brilliant characters and drama, and it could evoke such conflicting emotions. And it was well-written, scholaric, you felt pleased to be in the calming presence of the author. Yet what had delighted him most about this book, this little volume, that he read of his own accord, was that it was so musty and old, a hardback with reed-like pages and a delectable font, and he had picked it off the shelf one evening, in a dark, deserted area of the library; an obscure little volume seemingly, it hadn’t been touched for years – the last stamped date was 1976! – and it had just sat there quietly collecting dust, ignored by all, out of the mainstream rush of life, sitting preserved in this dingy, untouched corner of the library, waiting for an individual such as himself to step quietly up to the pate one day and pick it out, only to discover what a brilliant little pocket edition it was, and let it enliven his soul.

Then on such an evening, his soul revelling, spinning, dizzied with all that knowledge, he would finish reading at twelve, and go for a solitary walk through the deserted streets, pitch black and empty, and with well-being calm seeping slowly but surely through his soul and person, he would reflect calmly on life and literature and history, comparing and contrasting all the different books, stories and histories he’d learnt of, all the different dishes on the table of knowledge.

Or on another occasion, sitting in the library till late, growing ever more happier as it emptied, as other students left, sitting there till closing time, writing away passionately on his dissertation on the varying personalities of the Indian chiefs as they attempted to defy the encroaches of the white man, Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph and Geronimo. His soul happy, calm, and pleased with the work he’d done, he would stand up and go for a stroll around the library; ending up inevitably at the literature section, perusing the shelves, seeing names such as Webber, Wordsworth and Claire, his soul thrilled, promising himself that he would read these admirable books one day. No, you could not beat that sense of calm learning that pervaded the library at the end of the day. All those books, all that knowledge, all those periodicals and journals, full of scholaric findings. Peace, quite, calm. The cool rationality of academia.

In contrast his personal life had been lonely and sad, and it was because of this that he’d drowned his sorrows in his study and work, his love of learning. He had a few acquaintances, but not really any close friends. Just two or three fellow students on his course and a mature student, one of his flatmates, a kindly, wiser and older man who at least seemed to have some inkling into his nature, and sort of warmed to his sensitive, despondent soul. But by and large he was lonely.

So he was quiet, calm and reticent as a person, but at heart narcissistic, vein and angry. He felt pleased to be disengaged from the pettiness and backbiting that so often accompanies friendship, and he felt himself truer, just to be alone, missing out on human squabbling and bitchery. Although he also lost out on the advantages of friendship and was lonely, he felt his soul cleansed, his person removed from the tawdriness of human behaviour, and he prided himself that he could be described as a decent, honest person. Yet actually in his heart he was really quite hateful and judgemental, seeing and summing up all the faults in his fellow students.

Though in better moods he saw the good in them, recognised their sensitivity and intelligence, felt sorry for those of his piers who seemed to have an inborn love for such books as Wuthering Heights or the Return of the Native, a respect, but who, lacking his grit, would never truly read or engage in such books; though at times he felt sorry and warmed to them and saw that in their hearts they were good human beings and that he was the bad one, a psychopath and mad man for studying so hard and reading so thoroughly, and taking life so seriously; by and large he saw the worst in them, and got angry over that.

They just seemed so well-fed, so good looking, so rich and at ease. There were rows and rows of them, guys and dolls, fashionable, young and sexy, yet they were all so, so mainstream, so horribly conventional, so uninterested in opening up their minds. They were all in tandem with mainstream society, they loved celebrities and gossip, they equipped themselves with the latest mobile phones and all the hob-knobs of the consumer society. They wanted nothing more from their lives. Worldly affairs, money, fashion, who was cool, who wasn’t, partying, eating in restaurants, drinking, having a good time, these were what interested them.

It was ironic then that they should be exposed to the delights of learning, the highlights of literature and history. They didn’t really want to know anything of it. It was wasted on them. The rich, the beautiful, the well fed darlings of the petit bourgeoisie. Wasted on them. Wouldn’t it have been better to expose the humble, working class dog to these treasures? Wouldn’t there then have been more chance of their soul catching alight? Yet, for all that, you had to concede that the students had an intelligence; a quasi, pseudo, mediocre one, but an intelligence all the same, an intelligence that had qualified them for their university course in the first place.

So there you had it. They would never tax their brains and why bother? True, hard thinking removed you from that easy, comfortable mode of life and only brought you down, made you depressed and ill at heart. It required psychopathic energy, the will-power of a bastard, and it meant headaches, eye-problems and a gloaming of the spirits. Surely it was better to stay sated, well-fed and indifferent, at ease with the world like they, than turn, like Tony, into a true thinking, but lonely outcast, taxing his brain and becoming disillusioned with the world and life, no longer seeing it through the prism of well-being. It was probably better to remain like they.

So did he see the other students, and he was always angered by the worse of them, those like him that were narcissistic and power hungry at heart. Especially the girls, the beautiful girls. All of their lives, girls and boys alike, were incredibly pathetic, and they wasted all of their opportunities, squandering their days, waking up late, skipping lectures, lounging in cafés chatting, not happily and at ease, not basking in the sun of youth, but in fact lounging with dissatisfaction souring their hearts since they were feeling guilty, knowing fine well they should be studying, reading, or making something of their lives. Then one day they would finally turn out at the library, in an attempt to work. But they would do so only intermittently, mainly bitching and chatting with each other, unable to sit down and concentrate for more than ten minutes, and having to get up and talk on their phones, chatting to some acquaintance, their voices betraying their unhappiness and discontent. They were dissatisfied with their lives and rightly so, for they wasted their entire days.

They struggled with the work. Tony saw that it was clear torture for them to get through the classics he so loved, just as it had been at first for him, when he had had to wean himself off his accustomed diet of TV and e-generation entertainment, to challenge himself with something purer, nobler, better. His desire for something more, that diabolical, hollow, empty feeling that had so hounded him as he struggled to come of age – that had driven him on. They lacked that drive, they were happy where they were. So it was torture for them as they tried to muster the energy and concentration to force their way through the classics; skim reading, hating it all the time, and as a mark of their sheer boredom, underlining passages in their texts, in pretended interest, or making blithe comments in the margin about the motives of the characters, and generally defacing those beautiful little books with scrawling remarks that indicated just how little they liked them. When Tony observed them like this, as he sat say a little distance off in the library, saw a little group of them, together to try and help each other through the onerous demands of reading, then the equally onerous task of writing an essay around vague questions, having no real grasp of their text; when he saw them like this, clearly unhappy, dissatisfied, trying to concentrate, he felt quite sorry for them, since he knew at least some small part of them respected the echelons of learning and craved that beauty that it can bestow.

But his sympathy was limited, since they, the rich, the young, the beautiful, especially for him the girls, held the real power in this world, not he, not the lecturers or academia. And it hurt him that they should so tarnish by their attitude, their disinterest and scoffing, their lacklustre, scrawled, drivelling essays, such beautiful and magnificent subjects. It would’ve been better had they just stayed well clear of it all, and left it alone for those who loved it. Instead they sullied it.

And their attitude could not have been worse. It was one thing to see them hard pushed and tortured, writing an essay; to see the dissatisfaction and unhappiness writ upon their faces; but then when they called the intelligent and genuine lecturers and any students who showed an interest, freaks, geeks, bores and egg heads, it really got you down. It was bad enough when ordinary people said this; but when students at one of the best universities also said so, well, where did that leave things? Their seemed to be a cohort of girls, pretty and otherwise, dissatisfied and unhappy, who used this sort of vocabulary, scoffing and denouncing as boring anyone who showed signs of interest, unable to see that they, dissatisfied and miserable faced, were the boring ones; incapable of seeing their own position, planted as they were in the quagmire, not stupid enough to live the happy life of a dog, not intelligent enough to rise above: stuck in the middle.
Geeks, nerds, boffins and bores, professors, egg heads and swots. For them that was all academia amounted to. They couldn’t see the beauty, they couldn’t appreciate the elegance. And they compounded all this by narcissistically chasing firsts, often gaining them as well; cheap, hollow firsts on the back of laboured, mechanical, conventional answers and essays.