“I hear the song of the celestial heavens and its music is cacophonous.” Taldeer made those words with the mind of a prophet and with her intent on changing the world but I find they too describe the turbulence of the mind. This year has been one of perpetuating mental crises. At this years beginning I was given a job that I never thought would come and with it the promise of a career that had been my unconscious motive for going to university and studying geology. This was accompanied by my moving away from the part of the world I call home and the friends that have kept me sane.

It didn’t take long for this pipedream to be shattered as I became intimately familiar with the blue collar working life and it was in this life that I made certain my long held suspicion that a wage is more akin to a bribe than a reward. A bribe to live in ignorance of the world around you and its fathomless unjustices, a bribe to do as you’re told and not to think about it. A bribe not to think about anything, really.

The money was excellent for someone my age and the promise of a full time career was something many of my student colleagues would commit murder for, but I could not ignore the feelings that I could now afford a quality of life in the enjoyment of which I would be absent. For the first time in my life I could afford to rent a home that was ironically just a bed, a kitchen and a bathroom. It was the most laughable paradox that I had more money than I could find a use for but no time to put it to use. I could buy all the beautiful clothes that I had dreamed of as a confused and lonely 18 year old but I’d never be able to wear them. I could afford nice furniture but would never rest on it. I could buy the most gorgeous volumes of books but would neither have the time or the energy to read them.

Now I am home again and my mining contract came to its natural end with all parties separating diplomatically, a saving grace for what had been a 6 months fraught with failues. But I have traded one mental state for another, rage for depression, antagonism and hostility with saturnine, intolerance with boundless compassion and anxiety… is still anxiety.

In the few months since I have used my savings to fund a quiet existence of relative luxury and time. Time to read and read I have but I have felt a greater need. The need to create, the need to see what art I could make in this world and to see which worlds I can make into art. For this I need a place of my own and for a place of my own I need a job, the searching for which is among the most dehumanising things to exist and combined with my resurrected state of depression make it difficult to justify not going back to mining. 4 years at uni and half a year away in a frozen country town make for a sour taste when I internally insist on giving all of that up for a casual job. The fact is I can’t go back to mining and I need look no further than to the music I listened to to elucidate that fact. To satisfy my mood during those times I would listen to the sounds of torturous screams and vocal demonstrations of human agony. To call it music is a technical courtesy but to liken it the sounds of horror is a more accurate reference.

I was in a bad place and being in a better, safer place now I look back upon those times with the rose tinted spectacles that this better place provide. The majority of my university friends and colleagues have accepted their bribes and they are stronger human beings for making it work and making it their happiness but I read too many books that mandate I look at life, the world and all of our futures with a great deal more imagination. As consequence of this I revile the idea and the worship of work. How do I reconcile the literary dreams and prophetic visions of a utopia with the harsh realities we must live in and endure.

My job search is still very young and I sincerely hope it bears the fruit I so desperately need to live my life the way I want to. I look at my parents as well as so many others who have worked their whole lives and hate every element of their lives. They sit infront of the idiot box, taking in the flashing lights and scream with indignation the moment something happens that would otherwise require them to question themselves or their reality.