it's all very well, knowing how to write and understanding the need to record. but like falling trees, we somehow miss the point - illiteracy we can ill afford. and thus we fail like every other shallow flawed human endeavour. oh sarajevo kids, go you to berlin, and ask about charisma and ideals. don't forget your notepads, to be used as mirrors, your ears and eyes the tools of empathy. and we've travelled some way, we've learned to admit that this ice sculpture might once have been a stream. but i retain my apprehension as the picket lines in belfast throw pipebombs at their children in the family. we can't let our libraries slip out of our precocious grip. regress as students to learn the lessons, to stave off another 100 years of this farcical refrain of history. and i'd laugh if it weren't for the terror, the killing, and the conceit of ignorance, the idiocy of repetition. so come on kids, let's form another unity movement, that's just what the world needs. and i'm bored to the point of laughter by yet more stickers calling to abolish something tired and old. at once we must be teachers and students and recapture that infant state of mind, and concern ourselves with issues of absorbtion, not manifesto. this is not just for me or some jaded punk scene; it's a universal need to educate ourselves about ourselves. everybody needs to read more books.