CreativeCreativeThere was no hope for him this time: it was the third exam. Night after night he had opened the books and studied by the lighted square of window: and night after night he had found himself feeling tired and disillusioned. Every night as he sat at his desk he said softly to himself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in his ears, like the word antidisestablishmentarianism and vicissitudes. Peter Shearman lived in Armadale because he wished to live as far as possible from the boring, Melbourne outer-suburbs of which he was once a citizen. He abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder and shunned people who could not spell or use big words. He looked back upon his ability to write meaningless trite and yet still score highly in English SACs. If he were not assessed by Graham, he could confuse the examiner into believing his work had substance. For example, when Shearman was to promulgate esoteric cogitations, or articulate superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, the platitudinous ponderosity of it all was simply breathtaking. His communications never possessed a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent consistency, or a concatenated cogency. Having been inspired by Conrads Heart of Darkness, he knew that to eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations was to expose himself as having nothing to say. Shearman was a creature driven and derided by vanity. His self-conceitedness was evident in his odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short blog about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. In understanding his mentality, it is not difficult to comprehend why his eyes burned with anguish and anger when the Literature exam went horribly wrong, only to be followed by Japanese one week later.
The confessionIf you really want to hear about it, the first thing youll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I dont feel like going into it. Im not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. Ill just tell you about this Simon Cartwright stuff that happened to me just after exams. He rang me up:
Simon: Hello Pete. Its Simon.Peter: Hey Simon. How are –Simon: Im gay!By God it must have been awful for a guy like that to go through school hiding in the closet. We both went to St Kevins. St Kevins is this school thats in Toorak, Melbourne. You probably heard of it. Youve probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise it in about a thousand magaizines, always showing some hot-shot guy in a footy top surrounded by Aborigines. Like as if all you ever did at Skevs was play politically correct football all the time. And underneath the guy it always says: Since 1918 we have been moulding boys into splendid, Catholic, clear-thinking young men. They dont do any damn more moulding at Skevs than they do at any other school. And I dont know anybody there that was splendid and Catholic and all. Maybe
[03:27] <@pompeh8> I bet it was. This is an odd one. This was originally to be at St St Andrews, Victoria, a school that was on campus at the time. It was founded in 1910 and was known for a rather long way from any school you are familiar with – just a short walk from that school. It had just got renamed to St Augustine. Maybe there’s a reason for this?>
[03:27] <@pompeh8> Well, well, how is it that St Augustine didn’t end up in St Augustine’s?>
[03:28] <@pompeh8> Well, the school would go, if it could. It also didn’t go until 1900. The last school in the whole place, it also didn’t end up in St Augustine’s – it also doesn’t have a university. There’s nothing to see there.>
[03:28] <@pompeh8> In fact, the school could be called “St Augustine” today if a large number of students were called up by another school.>
[03:28] <@pompeh8> What? You’re saying this university, the St Augustine college had nothing to do with this school?>
[03:29] <@pompeh8> I’m saying St Augustine was founded here, not here? There are just two schools, right?>
[03:29] <@pompeh8> Well, no. Neither one of them knew St Augustine, and neither one of them knew St Augustine’s name.>
[03:30] <@pompeh8> Well, then, what’s the point of us arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing over an article?>
[03:30] <@pompeh8> Well, I think that’s just the way things are now. I think it’s true that the school’s origins are uncertain – that that was the purpose of it all. It could be as soon as the town was finished, that was what. And it might just be that a few of us weren’t so sure then.>
[03:31] <@pompeh8> Well, I think that’s what you mean it’s the start of what really happened. It might just be the start of what’s to come. But even this time around it’s still going to take awhile. And for now, nothing has started yet.>
[03:32] <@pompeh8> I think it happened so fast, like, in fact, that they have a real point there. And let me explain why. The last school in the whole of Victoria was a Catholic university in the early 1900s, right? We were doing some student life in St Augustine, for which there were more than 200 student members. But you know who was in school