Tag Archives: observations

Two thousand twelve

Christmas Eve is ambient lighting and colored lights: an empty loft in a hushed and peaceful city at any other time teeming with the sounds of buses and trains, sirens and drunken wails.

This was a year of challenge and opportunity. A year of travel and learning. As it goes, everything changed then changed again.

I don’t have much use for New Year’s resolutions. If something needs fixing or an opportunity lies in sight, best to get to it. That said, I started the year with a list of outstanding aspirations: change jobs, move house and neighborhood, and submit the paperwork for a visa renewal. Incredibly, all of these challenges were sorted by the beginning of Summer.

The year began in Las Vegas: a trip wrought with the confusion and disruption of maintaining a role at one employer whilst negotiating the next – amidst a great deal of alcohol and emotion. The months followed in limbo, an object in motion suddenly aimless and still as I awaited for government approval to stay in the country. Held within borders without a passport, every new decision a massive gamble. Plan to leave and plan to stay.

Then, suddenly — release! into the current. A grant to say yes. Within days an opportunity to move handed to me, to an incredible residence in a borough I begrudgingly left three years before. A summer of events, of friends, of discovery. The marriages of two beautiful couples, an invitation to witness that I am very grateful for.

And — travel, a ticket to ride! Bath to Brighton, Somerset to Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and Rye. Berlin, Amsterdam, Bologna, New York, Washington DC and Belfast. Vienna.

A good year, an exciting year, but not without turmoil or regret. In my personal life, chances gained then lost; a promising relationship and friendship broken by mistakes and neglect.

The last eight years of my life have seen continuous, tidal change. Jobs, homes, cities, countries. Though a few years stand back as unremarkable, change is the constant. I long for stability but shy from it, towards the gleam of possibility. Often, this leads to great things. However, if not balanced, these wax wings are bound to burn in the approaching sun.

What of next year? I intend to stay in the same job, the same flat and the same city. A year of potential firm footing? I am not naive enough to believe these things are not prone to upheaval. If, however, I keep to the ground a bit perhaps smaller, more interesting treasures are to be found.

This is my station

Written 24 April, 2012 whilst waiting for approval of a visa extension.

Over the past decade, I drifted from place to place, changing jobs and residence frequently without so much a purpose as a list of departures. In retrospect, it makes for an interesting narrative: years of seemingly irrational decisions tucked neatly under the guise of personal growth.

Fitting then, that my first serious attempt to keep things as they are is left to someone else to decide.

In limbo

In one week, the visa that grants me the right to live and work in the United Kingdom will expire. I applied for an extension two months ago, delayed a decision following unprecedented backlogs. Suffice to say, the coalition government’s heavy-handed measures to diminish immigration, coupled with the Border Agency’s fundamental inability to secure the border and manage immigration policy has left the system in complete disarray.

Fortunately, an expiring visa remains valid indefinitely until a decision is made. That comfort aside, the decision to approve or reject the application rests entirely with the Border Agency. The application process is a black box. On the outcome of rejection, I would be forced to leave the country immediately. With this knowledge, every decision I make is laden with meaning. Day by day, I plan to stay — and plan to leave.

I commit to a wonderful new job, new friends and a world of continued opportunity in London; I purchase tickets for conferences, festivals, gigs and holidays.

I review contractual obligations, delay new commitments, prepare a backlog of contacts and necessary tasks. I estimate asset losses, consolidate personal belongings for moving, research methods of shipping and money transfer.

It is a terrible state to be in, and a difficult one for others to empathize with.

In this, I am forced to consider a backup plan. And the answer is always the same.

Have _, will travel

This time, North America. To see a country I’ve barely known.

Nice idea. It begs the question: why is the fallback always travel?

At times, travel is a limited love affair with the romance of the unknown. At others, an endless ramble in search of purpose. For some, of course, it is simply running away.

In 2009, four months after I moved to London, the bottom fell out. As freelance work (and my bank account) dried up and full-time work proved elusive, I lost the room I was renting. I had already booked a flight to New York for end-of-year holidays, and decided the best course of action would be to use my remaining funds to travel until I was due to fly back in December. Things got better, the idea abandoned.

Travel seems like the lost dream of middle age, usually afforded to the very young and the retired. A means of living untethered, prior to or following stability. To some, it is a course for rebellion against the status quo, against marriage and parenthood. In the United States, world travel is often met with skepticism and condescension, even derision. A shame, as for others it offers so much unconsidered possibility.

I visited London as a tourist on the tail end of a holiday, an afterthought. I left one week later, the notion of moving to the city firmly planted in my mind.

If things do come apart this time, it would be easy to move back to New York. Perhaps a bit of travel first can offer a bit of unexpected insight.

Warmth

I remain unconvinced that connections sustained online can ever hold real value.

There are extraordinary cases, as with anything. Largely however, we are building and maintaining superficial and haphazard relationships.

I have more often found inspiration in fleeting, chance encounters; moments of genuine intimacy. We are pouring our lives into empty boxes.

Knowledge sharing is something altogether different.

Excessive voyeurism and exhibitionism building towards a sort of paranoia and neurosis, primal need for acceptance.

We forget warmth and affection.

Revisions, a flower shop

Regardless of the thousands of breadcrumbs we have crumbled in the wake of our ever-present, ever-tracking digital world individuals are still blank canvases. If you have exercised any modicum of privacy in your public life it is still remarkably easy — last stop, this town — to start over.

…that isn’t necessarily the point. We take the words of others for granted. Yes, over time we expand our understanding and solidify the histories we’ve learned. Largely, however, we accept what each other say as truth.

She was a florist — mostly arrangements, not so much reselling. She freelanced, odd jobs here and there. Most of the flowers came from local markets. I first saw her picking flowers from the bodega on Spring Street — or was it Prince? They were a brilliant yellow. I was wearing headphones (as always) and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” was playing — cheeky I know, but it’s true. Songs are rarely random anyway — large bundles of songs curated to appear at seemingly opportune times, eventually. I remember it was pissing down rain, windy. New York pulling out of winter, pushing into spring. I didn’t talk to her that day, just watched.

We ended the relationship in the same shop, arguing as we moved through the aisles; throwing words at each other as we tossed avocados and tomatoes into a hand basket. It felt like a cliché, a heated public discussion that only seem to happen in films. She left, I finished and paid at the checkout. The cashier, slow and apathetic.

Not a word of this is true.
The imaginative amongst us construct fascinating, intricate stories. How often do the mundane details of a day resemble fiction?