Contemplation

There is something about having too much time for thinking that is a particularly insidious kind of torture. Oddly the inability to hide from oneself is crueler a fate than any slings thrown from ill wishers and uncaring passers by. Because they don't really know. They can guess and insinuate and imagine but they will never know. They will never know the secret insecurities and thoughts that drive the stupid decisions and embarrassing moments. Those insecurities that resurrect every unaddressed feeling or moment that has occurred since birth and a few more beyond that. No external party can ever torture you as deeply and profoundly as your own mind.

This is the real reason that life is generally so busy. Physical survival was created to support emotional survival. Perhaps it merely exists as a distraction so that the force of all the baggage hits in bits and pieces rather than in an avalanche. This is why holidays are 2 weeks not 8, working for a living is a necessity rather than an option and those who have nothing but money and time are so remarkably self destructive. Without work to distract you, there remains chemicals. Well, chemicals or actually dealing with the problems, but that's far less entertaining than one would hope.

Still, every once in a while there is an unexpected external assist that comes along to help through the bits that somehow seemed like they are just always going to be there. And sometimes that external assist is someone who broadcasts their neurosis like a one person talk radio show. Someone who can be in a crowded room and still who's only company is their own neurosis. Because when someone who gives so much power to these no longer secret thought echoes a still secret thought of your own, somehow it gives new light on the decision of just how much power to give those nasty hidden thoughts.

And now we know what I shouldn't be when I grow up

There is something about life while unemployed that is particularly revealing. Life, while working, is a constant and never ending 'to do' list. There is never enough time to get everything done and still enjoy yourself which is why the expectation is that having some time away from work is a good thing.

This is a horrible horrible lie.
Upon returning to the UK to find that my recruiter and the firm handling my visa transfer had between the two of them made things so remarkably complicated that my company-to-be had rescinded their offer, I was immediately relieved. I shouldn't have been. I should have been irate that the offer had been rescinded weeks before while I was still in the US and no one had bothered to tell me. I should have been furious (and briefly was) that no one had mentioned the initial problem to me which I could have resolved in seconds. In fact upon the afternoon of my return to London, mere hours before receiving final confirmation from the company that the offer was in fact rescinded and why, I took a jet-lagged nap and had what could only be described as a nightmare that the offer was still on the table and they were merely awaiting the finalization of the paperwork for me to begin.

At this point, having lost a great deal of time in the job search process I got to work. I redid my CV creating several versions for different types of positions. I searched relentlessly for recruiting firms that remotely claimed that they handled marketing and the IT industry contacting in total over 80 firms. I finally narrowed it down to the three or four that actually deal with what I do specifically. It was miserable draining work and it took ages. Once it was done I leapt at the chance to explore museums and investigate London and all it offers. Aside from the British museum, which due to an adolescent obsession with archeology I never fully recovered from was hugely enjoyable, I have discovered that I hate museums. I hate being a tourist and probably I also hate tourists.

I now alternate between brutal efficiency and semi catatonic stupor broken up by afternoon napping. The hight of the efficiency was last Tuesday when I woke and up bounded to the gym where I stayed for two hours deciding to add a swim to my normal work out, ran errands, did laundry, roasted a chicken, cleaned the kitchen, journaled and cleaned my room. At this point it was two in the afternoon and I was bored out of my mind and completely out of anything remotely productive to do. In desperation I went to the National Gallery where I discovered that 90% of their pictures are of a very blond Jesus and the rest of their paintings are disappointing. I say disappointing fully realizing that they have what on paper looks like an amazing collection. But their Michelangelo paintings are unfinished and religious. If he wasn't even interested enough to finish them, why should I care about them. Their Monet's are not the good ones. They're the ones where you go 'oh... that one... okay.' Even the water lily painting they have is the only one from the series that I don't like.

Oh well... perhaps I'm just not meant to be idle.

Quest for the Holy Pie Pan

There are some things that are given. Things like sunny days in summer, flowers in spring and apple pies. These are fixtures. Realities. Things without which life will cease to exist and the universe will implode upon itself. As such, England is placing the universe in a precarious position. While there may be flowers it is extremely rainy far too close to June 1st and worse still... there is a disturbing dearth of pie pans.

There are items which one is told are pie pans by people who clearly have sustained a brain injury of some kind or have been placed under mind control by evil beings working towards the end of the universe. They are not pie plans. They aren't even tart pans. They are tiny little curved dishes made out of a non stick baking tray material. If one tried to make an apple pie in them there would not be adequate room for the apples thus totally missing the point of an apple pie. In a desperate attempt to save the universe from the utter destruction that will no doubt occur should the apples in the garden ripen without having a pie to go into, a scouring of the vicinity has occurred. Hours of walking from shop to shop in the irritatingly unseasonal rain looking for a proper pie pan have finally paid off. Summer apple pies will be here to hold off the end of the universe just a little longer.

Even more clear a sign of the impending end of the universe (and that it will clearly start in London) is being told by the grocery store clerk in the second to last week of November that there are no pumpkins because 'pumpkin day is over.' British grocery clerks insightful commentary on American holidays is no doubt the stuff that sociology dissertations are made but perhaps he should just shut up and get a damned pumpkin so I can make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner. As nice as the sweet potato pie was that I had to make instead; this year there will be a pumpkin pie if I have to have the pumpkin shipped to me from America.

Unfashionate

There are some truly elegant and well designed clothes to be found wandering the streets of London. Winter fashions that raise the bar for professional elegance and dress wear. Unfortunately there is a flip side to this well dressed metropolis... a brutal and ugly flip side.

London is a place where anything can be worn. But this doesn't mean it should be worn. Some of the items of clothing wandering around the streets of London worn by people who are neither blind nor preadolescent should be documented for posterity in warning for the generations to come:

• Fishnet stockings and a business suit on middle aged women. On no one would it be acceptable but on someone who went to high school in the seventies it is unforgivable.
• Red shoes, black tights and a blue wool suit skirt... No... just no.
• In fact any combination of shoes, stockings and skirt all three with clashing patterns and colors can and will be worn at will. This mistake is so basic that the desire to ask when remedial fashion skills stopped being communicated to young women is overwhelming.
• Striped tights... horizontally rainbow striped tights... no, not Dr. Who's scarf. Tights on full grown women in public, on purpose.
• Wool pinstripe short shorts with fishnet tights and heels. While more professional than the denim variety of short shorts, they do still in fact make the wearer look like a hooker. On the plus side they can now charge more.
• Full skirts with ruffles, embroidery and rosettes. No really! All three AT ONCE, in pink, on fully grown adult women, not 4 year-olds who have been allowed to dress themselves that day.

These aren't brave or daring fashion mistakes, they're merely painfully bad in an extremely juvenile and unsophisticated manner. While the explanation of such items usually involves the phrase 'I thought it was fun' or something equally banal, the reality is fun and attractive are not mutually exclusive. Even if they were there are worse things than boring clothing and they can all be found in the London tube during the morning commute.

High School Resolutions

There is the unfortunate reality that occasionally a group of fully functional adults can behave like teenagers. When this happens the high school dynamic can revisit the workplace raising too many unresolved issues to deal with in a rational adult manner. The resulting atmosphere is rife with cliques and rumors as well as an oddly distorted sense of order and protocol.

When used to this environment it probably doesn't seem all that unusual. Particularly joined closely enough after school so that it simply seems a continuation of how life is. For the lucky few who were able to leave high school behind them as teenagers and went on to University and work experiences that were largely populated by adults behaving as adults, joining this environment is nothing short of surreal.

It is beyond bizarre to be accused of behavior better suited to an evening soap opera than a human being, particularly when it is so entirely opposite to the reality of the situation. It is more bizarre to find nasty little cliques and standards for inclusion into one group that require exclusion of others for no reason better than petty grievances and rumors that so completely skew the reality of what the actual situation is that the dawning awareness of the reality of what is happening is roughly the equivalent of waking up from a truly intense dream. It is unpleasant and ridiculously hard to be productive in such a situation.

Fortunately it also gives an unusual opportunity to come to terms with the high school student that was. The high school student that perhaps was remembered unfairly. The high school student that was inclusive instead of exclusive. That refused to allow others to be ostracized. The grade school student that was the only one who gave the unpopular kid in class a valentine.

It is a rare gift that helps you learn to like and come to terms with the person you were and in some ways still are. And like high school, no matter how much you learn from your time there you're still intensely grateful that it ends.

The ship has sailed...

There are certain moments that are definitive endings; though not endings of actual situations but rather endings of possible situations. Possible futures. Possible choices. They are signature moments that are the emotional equivalent of watching a ship slipping over the horizon and knowing, finally, that it has sailed and will not be turning around. It is the moment in which there is no choice but to say goodbye to the future that might have been. Goodbye to the maybes and ifs and secret hopes that enter a mind uninvited though perhaps not unwelcome and fill idle moments with a giddy smile or a gleaming eye. There will be smiles to come but, at least for a while, they will be wistful and wondering. Smiles full of what might have been instead of what might yet be. The reality of what the situation would have been is irrelevant and now will always be far less true than what had been imagined.

Horrible overused clichés and truisms always come popping to mind in situations like this. Things about God, doors and windows as though God was a butler or housekeeper of some kind with nothing better to do than regulate air flow. Useless stinking clichés that do nothing to ease the moment. That stupid window might be in Bulgaria for all anyone knows and what good will it do there? The Bulgarians will surely appreciate it but it does nothing for anyone here.

And certainly that new opportunity will be simply amazing... unparalleled bliss from end to end. When it comes it will wipe all memory of that closed door completely from the mind. How could it be otherwise with such an all powerful air flow conductor. So all that can be done is to remember that the opened window is a lovely bay window with beveled glass and the kind of pillows that are just right for leaning against while reading some classic Bulgarian literature.

Adjectives

Adjectives are dashing, clever and powerful. They give color and texture to otherwise two dimensional descriptions. Some experiences are so large, so extreme that the adjective that best suits them should be explosive and exciting; a word so huge and profound that it shakes your very foundations. When that situation arrives however, generally the word is simple short and somewhat anticlimactic.

The best example of this is the adjective that best describes moving to a new country on your own. Moving to a new country is hard. Not difficult. Difficult is a weak and passive word. Difficult fades and stumbles, passing away in ignominy without a second thought.

Leaving everything and everyone behind and starting over in a place where the language is the somewhat the same but everything else is different right down to the rules of social engagement, is hard. Hard in a way that is said from the diaphragm and felt through the shoulders. Hard in a way that leaves a catch in your throat that never quite goes away. Hard in a way that keeps going, untiringly, unceasingly through pleasure and pain alike. Through self discovery, occasional overwhelming loneliness, success, failure and triumph it is hard. Not always bad, not always good but always hard. Really really hard.

And when things are hard all the time it’s tiring, even defeating. But if you keep going and keep going right along with the hard at some point the realization occurs that while it isn’t any less hard maybe you have become just a little stronger.