I've just woken up and i'm having my bowl of cereal before i get ready to go. I'm on this huge sugar rush.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was not neccessary.

Wilfred Owen was a latent homosexual and probably got it on with Siegfried Sassoon.

The American Revolution was rife with moral contradictions.

I just had the best hot chocolate last night. It was so thick i could probably use it as a sauce.

Shabazz Shillingford is probably lazily sleeping his arse off in bed at this point.

Maltesers are dangerously addictive.

Tehreem Javed is probably doing something far more interesting than the whole of London and Wales combined.

The majority of my college mates spend their money on hallucinogens.

Ismael Madden is always huggable.

I've lost my fucking gamecube controller. Then again my bed is a mess.

Would like to get some drumming practice but i dont think it'll happen.

I will stop this sugar rush now.

Must.Eat.Chocolate.

Streets and pavements unfold continously in the light of the sun. The footsteps tell the story as step follows step. I stand there and take it all in. Walking up narrow streets, or descending pathways into deeper suburbs, i can see further on into the landscape. I can see a long stretch of green, adorned with its relevant beauty and dynamic. If i turn right, i might even see the grounds of a castle. I might not. But why should i restrict the thought?

In this beauty, why should the dream be subdued?

In the sunlight, in the hazy wind, can you pinch the line between dream and reality?

I make it real. I make it so real that it hurts.

So much so that even when the illusion melts in the dark night, all of it has been for something. Maybe not something real, but something important nonetheless.

There's so much i want to write but i actually don't have the energy to flesh it all out in my usual writing style. So i'm just going to list them for reference and avoid the poetic flamboyance.

Not long left till exams now, its gone so fast i'm actually shocked. This is the time when everyone curls up into a ball and become absolutely antisocial to each other. And for good reason too. Its make or break now, and i've got to draw up some serious revision plans and work my ass off. I have decided one distinct thing though - all work will be done outside of home. Home is a place that i cannot work at. Give me a seperate room, a working space and some silence, and i still will not be able to work. It may sound silly, but it's because this house has literally hundreds of memories in it. Each room has its own history. Whenever i sit down to work, i always find myself distracted by it. Not just that, but in general, there's many distractions. I find myself having to make dinner for myself, mum, and lubna, as well as contributing to the housework and finding some own free-reading time for myself. In other words, there is simply no capability to work in the house and the more i try to push this the more it will work against me.

I've decided to stay in the library till it closes and come home late every night in preperation. I don't feel confident with any of my subjects at all, so now's the time to get really serious.

On a lighter note, i had the most amazing jam with Tarik and Iman today. We finally managed to get into that elusive music room and i got to play on that gorgeous Pearl drumkit. I must've jammed for about 45 mins altogether, and i was sweating like crazy at the end of it. Tarik was impressed and told me i had improved so much, but on hearing Iman's latin grooves on the drumkit i felt discouraged and right now i feel i need to improve more than ever. Still, it was an amazing jam and i'll never forget it. Even when Iman went on the drumkit, i moved to the bass and played some basslines, then i moved to piano and played some chords, then when all else failed, i picked up the tambourine and starting clapping the rhythm. It was absolutely great. I want to live in a music studio.

Something funny happened yesterday. Generally when i'm listening to my music, i'm making little movements. Either i'm air guitaring (not literally, but my hand will copy the strumming pattern) or my foot is tapping to the hi hat, or i'm just bopping my head up and down to the rhythm. This has been noted by several people, but i don't actually want to stop doing it. It's because when i listen to the music, i absorb it through my very being. I let it into my heart. So anyway, i was at Harrow station digging my music, and there's this girl standing next to me doing the same thing with her music. She smiled at me and we kind of danced with each other for a bit, LOL. I bet people must've thought i knew this person, but i really didn't! It was nice though xD

I've almost finished Pat Barker's Regeneration and when i do that i've gotta quickly devour another book. I'm trying to get as many books read as possible so that when i make my cambridge application, i'll be ready. I'm trying to widen my reading beyond classics - the last 3 books i read were all modern and i thoroughly enjoy them. I'll probably need to write a reading list for the summer.

I'm suddenly getting involved in my college social life all of a sudden. That is to say, i'm making aquaintances. Funnily enough, all of them are girls (with the exception of Iman) but again why does this surprise me....? I talked to Shireen loads today, and we had suprisingly a good conversation. She's definitely pretty, and my type, but i dont think i'm attracted to her. It really comes down to how her personality doesn't really integrate well with mine. Arinola is buff as well. She has this quiet voice but this constant neutral look on her face that gives her this cuteness. It's odd, before i would talk to these girls with literally no notice of how they looked, but all of a sudden i find myself noticing if they're pretty or not. Thats not to say it'll change my treatment of them - that more or less remains the same, but what i mean is i'll privately note this in the back of my head. It happens almost automatically. I guess it's good to know what you like right?

We had student reviews today. Sat with my english teacher. She said some of the following : "It's going really well as i expected. To be honest, if you get anything lower than A, that will be absolutely ridiculous. We're also probably looking at an A* for you next year at A2, so keep up the good work" ...yeah...talk about not pressurising me >_>; still i guess that's natural. She photocopied my Pride and Prejudice and shared it with the class (with my permission of course) as an "example essay" but now i find myself getting really paranoid over what people thought of it. I'm sensitive over my writing like that. Possessive is probably the word.

Bah, getting tired T_T i got a late start tommorow but i had such a tiring day. Plus i got to take a shower after that sweaty drum session. I wish i had a portal that took me to my friends so i could hug them before i went to bed. I'd make portals to Ashja, Tehreem, Ismael and Carina so i could give them all a long nice goodnight hug before i disappear back to my own room xD Ah my mind wanders too much sometimes.....

Something weird has happened. My recent successes in the academic world show how the whole thing is just an elaborate sucking up and self-selling process. I am bringing this discussion back to old ground, but within new light. I face myself with "assessment objectives" and "mark schemes" and i see the targets they want me to shoot. I curve my essays and my expression and tell them what they want to hear.

The more i stay inside, the more i realise education is really just a culture. To be an academic, you've got to be a certain kind of person. You've got to be a kind of person who is interested in detatching from reality and who wants to explore abstract processes. Elizabeth marries Darcy. Don Juan gets washed up on the shore. Edmond Dantes gets his revenge. All of these we are so familiar with, but in discussing them and writing essays and pursuing analysis, i actually feel that i am getting nowhere. It is because these stories are not real.

The only realities i ever felt were close moments with friends, earning money for myself, making music and stories. Because for these moments, i actually felt like i was working on my own terms. I was furthering my own development. Not sucking some lecturer's cock just so i could get a good grade.

Universities create the education system in their own image. What is fashionable and acceptable is deemed by what universities find acceptable and what they reject. In order to gain entry, you have to change yourself into what they would find the most ideal. I was not, and never will be an academic, but i simply go through the motions in honour of finishing what i started. I am only interested in the creative and emotional side of life and everything else is a petty distraction.

When i'm left on my own for a while, my mind and my heart wanders astray to the lives of others that i love. This behaviour of mind is something that developed entirely on its own and is only recent. That is because i know that in my day to day life, i am all alone in my advances. I am surrounded by pure incompentence, by people who stab each other in the back, by those who worship the mundane and hate me because of what i stand for. This neglect doesn't hurt me because i am deprived of their good opinion; but it is the absence of meaningful interaction in my life that bleeds me dry.

My mind rewinds back to Ashja. A person who made me feel and realise everything else that was higher in this life. His daily phonecalls, his selflessness, his love for me which for a long time remained invisible. The queue of people that seem to stand in his life stretches on forever. Like a small child, i try to find my way into his life through all the crowds and all the hustle and bustle. Small half an hour appointments is all i can scavenge. Afterwards, i realise i know nothing. I know nothing of the humanity of his life. All i know are the little details. My history with him is extensive, but in the face of the current day busy city life, all of it becomes obsolete. Forgotten archives of history sink to the bottom of the ocean, covered with rust and dirt. My childhood with him becomes like this.

I remember Ismael, whose arms around me wrapped around in a tight hug, his smile and goofy laugh made me feel loved. Sometimes on the way back home from college in the dark evening, i find a corner or an alleyway and sit there on the floor. I do that to avoid going home with everyone else. In those moments, i wish so badly for him to be there, to chat to me as i go home, to put his arm around me as i sit there in the darkness. But now he's plagued by a sadness that no amount of my own love would ever cure or affect. This fact gets to my heart, squirming inside and destroying the interior.

And then there's Tehr. This one comes across with a deep bitterness at the way things pan out. At paradox of which we are personally so close, but yet geographically so far apart. Almost as if, we're not given a chance to exist in our most basic sense. We exist only as binary data - bits of electricity. Surrounded by so many morons, and by absolutely nobody who understands the essence of me except her, the distance becomes a form of hopelessness; at the extent of which humans have no control over what it is that makes them happy or unhappy.

Why are these 3 people such a recurring theme in my dreams? Why do i dream of being kids with Ashja? Of chasing Ismael down in the mosque and tackling him down playfully before prayer time? Rowing in a boat across a huge, expansive lake with Tehreem? Why do they stay in my dreamworld?

Love, perhaps. But love goes both ways. You feel lifted at your highest point when having close moments with those you love, but when something happens to them, or when you are outside the loop, you are at your lowest point. You worry and you feel upset. And none of this is under my control. Sometimes i wonder why i care so much. Sometimes i get bitter and wished i didn't have to care, so i wouldn't feel so bad. But i cant help it. It is just the way i feel about them, and it'll never change. I'll hide it behind all the music in the world, between these useless words. They'll hide my dreams and my heart, and how much it hurts sometimes.