Lists and literature

Part 1: George Orwell's 1984

A defining moment in my education was the re-reading of George Orwell's 1984. I had been given the book as a presnet for Christmas when I was eleven or so, and read it from cover to cover in a few days.  I loved the concepts, and was titlilated by the dirty bits. But most of all, I loved the sheer bleakness of it all. The futility. The blackness of a world that constantly rewrote history and where the heroes didnt win, they were bludgeoned into submission. Just the sort of thing to thrill an 11 year old boy.

And then years later, I experience a revelation. An epiphany. I saw an analysis of the book that said it was the most hopeful, optimistic book that the reader had ever read. And this was because of the epilogue. Critical to the plot of the book was the concept of Newspeak. A language that controlled thought. A language that was manipulated by the state to such an extent that individual thought itself was channelled into the thinking of the state. Scary shit. But the key thing was the epilogue, a chapter I had skipped over as an excited eleven year old as some boring shit about the technical details of Newspeak, a chapter I didnt understand at the back of the book. The key thing was that the epilogue was written in past tense. And a simple message, overlooked by an eleven year old, was as plain as day, on re-reading. That Newspeak was history. That in all the bleakness of the entire book, there was hope, that there was something after the regime. That insight, like all really good books, changed my outlook on life.

Part 2: Our List

And so to our tense. But this time not the past, but the future. When you are in it, the bleakness, the hope is in the future tense. And today, as occasionally she does, my beau spoke about US in the FUTURE tense. Its the beauty of language revealing the inner depths of the unconscious mind and heart, despite the best efforts of our conscious mind  to exercise caution. And she asked me to do this. To disclose our list. Our list about the future. Dont get me wrong, it may just still be a pipedream, and I'm not taking anything for granted (this is big stuff for both she and I) butt if we ever do get together, then this is what we are going to do.

1. London (sublist to follow)
2. Spain, the pine walk, and the hill walk to the church, and the heat
3. July 12th, cos I need to understand
4. Shopping, lots of it
5. Vegas
6. Seeing just how much we can take before we say 'no more'
7. A remote cottage, where no-one can find us
8. Family parties, where nothing is left unsaid

There should be more. And I now pledge that I give my partner, my soul mate, my lover, access to add the next part of the list. I look forward to it. Her take, on our future tense.