And While She Looks so Sad and Lonely There...

I absolutely love her.

A slightly different take on the last post, in someone else's words.

ESTRAGON:

Nothing to be done.

VLADIMIR:

I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. So there you are again.

ESTRAGON:

Am I?

VLADIMIR:

I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.

ESTRAGON:

Me too.

VLADIMIR:

Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? Get up till I embrace you.

ESTRAGON:

Not now, not now.

VLADIMIR:

May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?

ESTRAGON:

In a ditch.

VLADIMIR:

A ditch! Where?

ESTRAGON:

Over there.

VLADIMIR:

And they didn't beat you?

ESTRAGON:

Beat me? Certainly they beat me.

VLADIMIR:

The same lot as usual?

ESTRAGON:

The same? I don't know.

VLADIMIR:

When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be . . . You'd be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

ESTRAGON:

And what of it?

VLADIMIR:

It's too much for one man. On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.

ESTRAGON:

Ah stop blathering and help me off with this bloody thing.

VLADIMIR:

Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable in those days. Now it's too late. They wouldn't even let us up. What are you doing?

ESTRAGON:

Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?

VLADIMIR:

Boots must be taken off every day, I'm tired telling you that. Why don't you listen to me?

ESTRAGON:

Help me!

VLADIMIR:

It hurts?

ESTRAGON:

Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

VLADIMIR:

No one ever suffers but you. I don't count. I'd like to hear what you'd say if you had what I have.

ESTRAGON:

It hurts?

VLADIMIR:

Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

ESTRAGON:

You might button it all the same.

VLADIMIR:

True. Never neglect the little things of life.

ESTRAGON:

What do you expect, you always wait till the last moment.

VLADIMIR:

The last moment . . . Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?

ESTRAGON:

Why don't you help me?

VLADIMIR:

Sometimes I feel it coming all the same. Then I go all queer. How shall I say? Relieved and at the same time . . . . appalled. AP-PALLED. Funny. Nothing to be done. Well?

ESTRAGON:

Nothing.

VLADIMIR:

Show me.

ESTRAGON:

There's nothing to show.

VLADIMIR:

Try and put it on again.

ESTRAGON:

I'll air it for a bit.

VLADIMIR:

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. This is getting alarming. One of the thieves was saved. It's a reasonable percentage. Gogo.

ESTRAGON:

What?

VLADIMIR:

Suppose we repented.

ESTRAGON:

Repented what?

VLADIMIR:

Oh . . . We wouldn't have to go into the details.

ESTRAGON:

Our being born?

VLADIMIR:

One daren't even laugh any more.

ESTRAGON:

Dreadful privation.

VLADIMIR:

Merely smile. It's not the same thing. Nothing to be done. Gogo.

ESTRAGON:

What is it?

VLADIMIR:

Did you ever read the Bible?

ESTRAGON:

The Bible . . . I must have taken a look at it.

VLADIMIR:

Do you remember the Gospels?

ESTRAGON:

I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.

VLADIMIR:

You should have been a poet.

ESTRAGON:

I was. Isn't that obvious?

VLADIMIR:

Where was I . . . How's your foot?

ESTRAGON:

Swelling visibly.

VLADIMIR:

Ah yes, the two thieves. Do you remember the story?

ESTRAGON:

No.

VLADIMIR:

Shall I tell it to you?

ESTRAGON:

No.

VLADIMIR:

It'll pass the time. Two thieves, crucified at the same time as our Saviour. One—

ESTRAGON:

Our what?

VLADIMIR:

Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other . . . damned.

ESTRAGON:

Saved from what?

VLADIMIR:

Hell.

ESTRAGON:

I'm going.

VLADIMIR:

And yet . . . how is it –this is not boring you I hope– how is it that of the four Evangelists only one speaks of a thief being saved. The four of them were there –or thereabouts– and only one speaks of a thief being saved. Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a while?

ESTRAGON:

I find this really most extraordinarily interesting.

VLADIMIR:

One out of four. Of the other three, two don't mention any thieves at all and the third says that both of them abused him.

ESTRAGON:

Who?

VLADIMIR:

What?

ESTRAGON:

What's all this about? Abused who?

VLADIMIR:

The Saviour.

ESTRAGON:

Why?

VLADIMIR:

Because he wouldn't save them.

ESTRAGON:

From hell?

VLADIMIR:

Imbecile! From death.

ESTRAGON:

I thought you said hell.

VLADIMIR:

From death, from death.

ESTRAGON:

Well what of it?

VLADIMIR:

Then the two of them must have been damned.

ESTRAGON:

And why not?

VLADIMIR:

But one of the four says that one of the two was saved.

ESTRAGON:

Well? They don't agree and that's all there is to it.

VLADIMIR:

But all four were there. And only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others?

ESTRAGON:

Who believes him?

VLADIMIR:

Everybody. It's the only version they know.

excerpt from Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett

Now if Only I Could Get Rid of this Blasted Headache

Hold Onto Your Blessings, Count Them One by One

"Runaway. But what are we running from?
A show of hands from those in this audience of one."

I couldn't be happier, couldn't be luckier; it couldn't have been easier. I'm not jumping up and down; that's just not me, and if you ask if I'm excited I'll probably just shrug my shoulders and say, "Yeah...I guess." I suppose when you exist in a state of knowing it'll always work out somehow you really don't ever have anything to get excited about. I don't get overwhelmed with anticipation because there is no "if it happens" only "when".

I'm excited in my own way.
More so I'm just grateful.

One day. Tomorrow. This time, but 4000 miles and 5 time zones away, 48 hours from now, I'll be causing havoc with one of my newest, closest, and dearest friends. Yep, couldn't be luckier.

I used to think that OLP had it right when they said that happiness isn't a fish that you can catch, but it's not true. It works for an angsty rock song, but it's no kind of theme for a life.

"And yet to learn of kindness, after so much unkindness... To understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find that her prayers were answered...can that not be called happiness? After all, these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind."

Two Days Until I Fly Away

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then the other, just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Less Traveled, by Robert Frost

It's a Green Like No Other

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost

England is a green that isn't made anywhere else. Just like Paris is purple and pink and the Cote d'Azure is cobalt blue. Italy is burnt orange. Australia is either orange-red or royal blue but never at the same time, and New Orleans, Mardi Gras or not, is purple, green, and gold.

They ask me why I'm going back, and I know they want the elevator answer, so I don't tell them that I'm going back because of the moss under my bare feet. Because of the smell of lilacs in the air. Because of bluebells in March or rain-soaked wood in forests older than the concept of time. I'm going back for pasture divided by hedges and stone-hewn walls. For fields dotted with sheep. For greasy pub food and far too much beer. They don't really want to know, but I'm going back because of sprawling metropolis juxtaposed with medieval village. Because of walled gardens and shops closing at six. They're just asking to be polite but if they really wanted to hear the answer I'd tell them that I'm going back for church bells on Sunday. For lazy, meandering rivers. For cobblestone streets. For empire living hand in hand with history. For puddles in the pathways. For hills and valleys. For oak trees. For apple blossoms. For a green like no other.

Three days.

The Four Days

Four days and I'm starting to lack witty and/or semi-insightful things to say about this trip, so I give you some "Toothpaste for Dinner".

5

She was so Much More Secure in the Uncertain

Six more days and I'm pretty sure on most things. I know where I'm working. I know where I'm living, at least at first. I know how I'm paying for what needs to be paid for and I know I have some pretty incredible friends there that would walk on water for me if I asked them too. I know my mates from work would give me anything I needed without a second thought. I know my lovely boys will provide hours of usually-drunken entertainment. I know my old friends, some beautiful girls, who are in London right now are always there for a drink or a dinner or a walk in the afternoon. I know I will have visitors in the form of family and friends from back home. I know that as much as I'm walking into this alone, I'm really not alone. Not alone at all.

But there are one or two things I don't know. One or two things I can't--won't--talk about here. One or two things that make me question not if what I'm doing is right, but ask me why it's not wrong.

I tend to do better when I don't know anything. I think that the more I know how something will be, the cockier I get, the more insecure I feel.

Maybe because when I don't know anything I don't feel personally responsible for what happens?

Maybe because I've learned not to trust what I can see over what I know on a visceral level?

Maybe because it was going to be that way all along.

Six days will blink by.

So much to do, so little time... But it's all the time we have, and it's all the time in the world.

Seven

Seven Days
Seven Wonders of the (Ancient) World
Seven Deadly Sins
The Group of Seven
Seven is a Neutral pH
Seven Objects in the Solar System Visible from Earth With the Naked Eye
Seven Liberal Arts
Seven Days of Creation
Seven Virtues
Seven Sacraments
Seven Sages
Seven Circles of Hell
Seven Years in Tibet
Seven Ranks of Archangels
Seven

Seven more rotations around the sun.

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer

Eight days and life changes again, and I debate the possibility of changing my name to Janus. Two faces staring in opposite directions. Change. Difference. A movement from one place and time to another. A journey. Delta.

"The wild waters roar and heave. The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her downed. All save one--a lady. Whose soul is greater than the ocean. And her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace. Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore."

I've been reminded lately of something Nietzsche said, "there is no progress, only change" and this is good and and it's true. In cultural studies we call this the myth of forward progress. But then again we do rather enjoy the notion that we're not just bouncing around like pinballs. Maybe the opposite of movement in a linear direction isn't chaos. Maybe there's some "divine" master plan. Maybe we're not all just spinning ourselves on a spinning planet, Whirling Dervishes, caught up in our own momentum, pushed around and around by centripetal force. Or maybe we are. Maybe there is no alpha or omega, no beginning and no end. And if that's true then there really isn't any change either, is there? The needle is jumping to the next track on the record, but it still makes the same motion, and the space it takes up is only different in the most minuscule of ways. Driving down the road looks different at night, but it's the same road you drove down during the day. The difference is illusory. There is no difference at all.

Eight days and I wake up on my own new and distant shore. The final act in a series of a events that stem from a decision I made on the spur of the moment in mid-April while sitting on a hill in the fragrant dark, church to my back, valley below me.

Even my spontaneity is meticulously planned.

My rational, logical brain is telling me that I should be asking what the opportunity cost is. One of the only things I ever really, truly understood from economics. Opportunity cost is my internal barometer, but I know it too is illusory when it comes to this.

Sometimes we do things simply because not doing them isn't something we can bear.

Eight days and I don't bother to shatter my calm with questions other people seem to think I should have the answers to. The hows and the whys. I don't feel the need to know those things. If there is one thing I believe with unwavering certainty it's that the universe provides.

"The key to change is to let go of fear."

Eight days and I don't feel excitement. There isn't any need, I knew this would happen.

Norman Maclean says, "Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's greatest flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. One some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."

Maclean is poetry personified, but he was wrong about one thing. Things don't eventually merge into one; they already are.

And so she moves, a dandelion wish blown on the wind.

"But... but what are those?"
"Those are wings, Thumbelina. These are fairies and fairies have wings so they can fly."
"Mother, have you ever seen a fairy?"
"Well, I thought I did once."

Creativity = Dead

Soooo, basically when you work every single day for 6 weeks (or was it 7...8??) straight your creativity kinda takes a bit of a hit. Between three jobs and seeing as many people as possible I've been a little busy trying to, you know, sleep and stuff. But now things are calming down again so hopefully I'll be saying stuff here again. Sometimes. We'll see how it goes.

However!

Big plans: heading back to England on the 18th! Well I'll get there on the 19th because of the time difference, but you know. I live somewhere in that written on part. Exciting, exciting.