Archive for March, 2007

Knobs on the doors in America! Thursday, March 29th, 2007

Kris at work asked me the other day how often I see Katie in a year. “Three or four times,” I told him, and we both laughed. Kris is one of the loveliest people I know and he wouldn’t laugh at my situation spitefully. He wouldn’t laugh if I didn’t also. And I laugh because, as they say, you’ve got to, haven’t you?

In any case, I’ll be seeing rather less of Kris and more of Katie in the months to come. The Robsons have, absurdly generously, agreed to look after me for, not the two weeks surrounding my birthday as was planned, but a period nearer to three months. In no particular order, the benefits or reasons are these:

• Mrs. Robson has promised to illustrate my short stories (now numbering four and a half), but, vile woman that she is, she works too hard and as such doesn’t have the time - or, I would expect, the energy - to draw silly pictures of weird fuzzy critters. So, for three months, I’m going to steal as much of her work away from her as possible and chain her to a table with pencils in her hands. I’m really proud of these “short tall tales” and I’m genuinely hoping to have them published as soon as possible. If we can achieve that, I can earn some credit as a storyteller and perhaps some money as well, both of which are very helpful when it comes to making films (which is next on my list of vocations…).

• May, June and July are the three months that Katie will be home from college. We’ve never spent more than three weeks together, so three months is going to be wonderful. Honestly, spending four hundred pounds to see your fiancÈ for two weeks every four months is laughable, isn’t it? Katie is planning to come to England for Spring semester ‘08, so, over the next year, we should get to spend a lot of time together.

• This is a perfect reason for me to leave my job, which, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been feeling less and less comfortable with recently. What happens when I return is uncertain at the moment (an ambiguity that I’m quite reveling in). Perhaps I’ll head to Africa. I expect I’ll take up street performing as I’ve threatened. Human statuing is fun, and I also had a wonderful notion of getting an ugly old honky tonk piano (though of course I have no idea where in London [or Colchester, or wherever] I would keep a piano, and taking along my digital piano or a keyboard just doesn’t have the same charm…) and setting it up outside somewhere to play rhythm ‘n’ blues for passing pedestrians, which I could happily do all day long.

• A lot of the people reading this are my American friends. I get to see you! Although I saw most of my closest Pineappleers last July, I haven’t been to the States since - crikey - February ‘06, and I very much miss Betsy and Scott and Mr. and Mrs. R and Loki and you. It’ll be strange to be, for a little while, part of the social circle, rather than just a guest. Strange and wonderful. And I’ll get to meet some of Katie’s extended family and watch the fireworks on July 4th. I delight in fireworks.

It’s moving how accommodating the Robsons are to me. I made sure everybody was given the opportunity to object to my staying for so long, because three months is a long time to intrude on other people’s lives, but I’m led to believe that, as is their way, nobody raised a finger in defiance. I suppose I should expect my fiancÈ’s family not to be too bothered about putting me up, especially given the circumstances, but I’m still unspeakably grateful for how lovely they all are to me.

Posted in Books, Personal, Short Tall Tales • 9 comments

Bad day Friday, March 23rd, 2007

The PS3 went on sale in the UK today. I sold three, and found the experience severely depressing. The cost of those three consoles would have, in Oxfam’s hands, provided over 21,000 meals for African children. Am I labouring that point? Or is it a point that can’t be made loudly enough?

This entry was interrupted by my mom, asking me to help her move some photos from her camera to her computer. The photos were from New Year, when Katie had come to England. They made me smile. All day, when I’ve been thinking bad thoughts, I’ve said to myself, “think about Katie,” but it hasn’t worked, because all I’ve been able to think about is how miserable I’m going to make her when I tell her what an awful day I’ve had. But I’m used to seeing Katie alone, or with Krissy, and not with me, and seeing photos of us standing together, smiling and kinda cute, has made my day.

Happy ending. Fooled you.

Posted in Oxfam, Personal • 1 comment

I hate the way we live Friday, March 23rd, 2007

I am so ashamed of Western society. We are consumed by greed; obsessively, fatuously materialistic - and it’s this selfishness that causes us to steal from each other, cheat and lie to each other, hurt, kill each other. I don’t want to support a society like this. I don’t want to be part of a society like this.

Recently, I’ve been very seriously considering applying to a UK equivalent of the Peace Corps and volunteering to go to an “underprivileged” country to … whatever. Farm, teach, counsel, play. To help. To support - to be part of - a society that thrives on people instead of property.

Peace Corps is exclusively for US citizens. The United Nations Peace Corps is for experienced volunteers only, as are the relevant VSO programs. Other organisations, such as United Planet, appear to be little more than tourism opportunities.

In short, I can’t find a single suitable organisation.

Posted in Politics • 6 comments

The last time Monday, March 19th, 2007

Not listening is a little more difficult than it might seem. I had a very pleasant day today; I avoided moaning to myself, I smiled when I could have been frowning, and it was all quite delightful until, at dinner, dad opened by informing us that so-and-so’s sister was in politics…

I tried not to listen, but soon enough my heart was pounding with mirrored indignation. The opining was about how this lady had been a magistrate, one of the duties of which involved adjudicating on matters of adoption. She had recently resigned because she “simply couldn’t handle allocating a child to same-sex parents”. (The government recently ruled adoptions by same-sex couples legitimate and that to turn away potential parents on the grounds of their sexuality was unacceptable - and, in an incredible but brilliant further move, responded to the religious groups’ [who run a great number of adoption centres in the UK] cries for exemption from the new law with a resounding “no”.) He then commented that doctors are allowed to refuse to have any part in an abortion and asked, “if they can opt out, why can’t we?”

I presume that “we” in this case in fact means “she”, since, having no interactions with homosexuals, adoption agencies or orphaned children, there is nothing for my father to opt out of, except perhaps reasonable thinking. Even if the comparison made any sense, surely it would be the child, rather than the adoption agency, who should have a right to refuse the parents, and presumably they do have some such right (at the very least, they can be so difficult as to dissuade prospective parents, but I wonder how discriminatory a child genuinely in want of such care would be).

I am going to have to learn, like Lisa Simpson, to listen to music in my mind that will block out external diatribes. Let this be the last time I write about my father’s infuriating opinions. Let it be the last time that I listen.

Posted in Personal, Politics • 1 comment

I am implementing some changes. Sunday, March 18th, 2007

I am implementing some changes.

1. I am going to stop listening when my father moans about things - which is most of the time, because that is what he enjoys doing. When he moans about things, I inwardly - and sometimes on this journal - moan about him with equally angry passion. I am going to refrain from listening when he starts talking about anything topical or political, because his nonsense beefing only aggravates me. I have tried in the past to reason with him but he can’t grasp reason. I must allow myself to remember that people, on the whole, are not so suggestible, gullible or ignorant as to take his rants as certainty and that, as such, his complaints are insignificant. Of course, the irony is that I am now moaning about moaning. For this reason I have made this change #1, because it was necessary that it preceded change #2 (d’uh!):

2. I am going to stop moaning. The people that I moan to, in order of frequency, are:

1. Myself.
2. Katie.

When I moan inwardly I find myself becoming increasingly angry, and each time it happens the anger seems to grow a little further. I have never until recently been an angry person and that is something that I don’t intend to change. Yet I moan in my mind a lot. I moan every time somebody leaves the belt running at work. I moan when my dad lets the water drip from his washed hands across the kitchen floor and doesn’t clear it up. I moan at the wind for blowing me about. When I don’t moan, my state of mind is delightful to experience. Unlike my father, I’m not somebody who gains satisfaction or pleasure from moaning. So why, when it only makes me grumpy, do I moan so much?

What’s more comforting? Your CD collection, or the knowledge that somebody’s child didn’t die of malaria, because you gave a few pounds to buy a mosquito net?

I often find myself spouting cynical comments to Katie (not about her!). And even as I’m about to say them, I’m aware that I’m going to say something negative quite unnecessarily. I make little critical asides that to omit would make no difference - but for making the conversation a touch more pleasant. And I ask myself as I say them, “why am I saying this?” As I do with her, Katie feels down when I feel down, so it should be obvious that making grim criticisms will only make her day marginally less fun. Making a point to change society’s attitude is great. Moaning on this level is really dumb.

3. I am going to take up street performing again. Working in a shop is really starting to wear me down. The job itself is pleasant enough and the people are fun to work with, but the attitude, the overall goal - not to make people happy, or to make things better, but solely to make as much money as possible - I can’t maintain for much longer. Money isn’t something I’m interested in, and I find this selfish purpose so cynical that I don’t think I can keep it up. It nags at me like a perpetual itch in my mind. When I came back from Europe last July, I told buddy Rory about our brief stint as street artists, and he asked if he could try it out with me some time. I’m going to suggest that we do when he returns from his trip across India; experimentally at first, of course. But how wonderful it would be to have a job that involves making people smile from their souls!

4. I am going to give most of my material stuff to Oxfam. I have piles of CDs that I don’t use - not because I don’t want to listen to the music but because it’s all on my Macbook anyway. It’s like having two copies of each CD and refusing to give up any of them. £2 each week can buy 133 school dinners each month in impoverished Africa. To me, these CDs have little or no value - yet each individual CD that I own is worth nearly 60 healthy meals to deprived children. I decided last night to give them away and I took them down from the shelf and piled them up immediately, knowing that I wouldn’t if I left it until the next day. Do it! Creature comforts? What’s more comforting? Your CD collection, or the knowledge that somebody’s child didn’t die of malaria, because you gave a few pounds to buy a mosquito net? I apologise for the level of manipulation in that statement, but I’m not so apologetic that the principal doesn’t still stand, and I by it.

Those are some changes that I’ve already begun to make. The first two I mention in part by way of apology to anybody who has suffered my grousing. The third is a prospect that makes me happy, which is always worth detailing. And the fourth, I hope, is a precedent.

*

I now have so much classical music on iTunes that on a random setting most of the pieces chosen are classical. It is indescribably relaxing.

Posted in Oxfam, Personal • 5 comments