When everything is starting to make sense

I find myself sometimes thinking about things. Surely spending time alone has helped. It was the kind of period when I kpt on cleansing myself. Sometimes when life's too busy, you realize you carry so much waste around, simply because there is no time to discard it and with people always around, it's a hard thing to do. These days I feel like I'm going through all sorts of stages and every day brings me closer to where it want to be.

I now look back at my life and realize I am the kind of person who believes in one great love, the kind of person that truly believes in a life long relationship and wants it with such a passion that it sometimes seems unreal, the kind of person that has always wanted that. Some people marry young, due to circumstances or simply because they didn't know any better, and by the time they're in their 40s, they want out of that marriage. They secretly wish to live the single life, unattached, sleep with different people anytime without a sense of responsibility, they want to taste life for themselves, they want to find out who they are. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be in a relationship, I wanted somebody by my side, to make me feel less ugly, less undesirable, less disatvantaged, I suppose I secretly wanted a father figure to give me the sense of security I've never had when I grew up. Somehow, I never got what I wanted, but the kind of life other people may wish for: freedom and total flexibility (they only things I own are my clothes and my shoe collection..). I now find myself at 30 years of age looking at other people and wondering how do they do it? How do they meet? How do they decide they are made for one another and decide to share lives? I am dumbfound by the mistery. And even after so many years of going through a lot by myself, of having proved to myself that I am capable of being my own father figure, I still look at young couples on the street wondering how come they found eachother the same way I used to look at other kids' fathers thinking how come they were so nice...

I try to believe that my hippie existence has a higher meaning and that I must use my flexibility as best as I can, but all I secretely wish for is a lovely little house and a bunch of kids... Oh but I bet that once I have that, I'll be running away to South America to try and save the rain forest, or at least what's left of it... By trying to bring the stability he has never offered me into my life and not finding it, I am afraid I have become my father. A restless soul, never happy, never really free...

(Disclaimer: these recent posts are a mix between reality and a study for future writing. Do not take it all seriously, don't call the ambulance, I am not mad :) not yet... )

Tonight I'm staying in!

It's Friday night and London's been blessed with amazing sunny days. On an amazingly warm Friday night, one would just about look forward to the end of the working day to hit the nearest pub and have late night with friends or workmates.

I must admit that I felt terribly inclined to do the same. Despite the tiredness of the past week (packing, moving, cleaning and, oh, on top of that, working!), I fancied the idea of going out drinking this Friday night and carry on with an activity that has since long become a habit or perhaps even a lifestyle. When I realized that feeling the need to go drinking, getting attention and messing about has become something of a necessity, I decided it was time for detox. That's right, a Friday night in all by myself, watching TV, writing or even dinking a cider, while writing in front of the TV, nevermind; reflecting upon all the things that make me feel needy, and insecure, and unstable and jumpy, and incosistent. I decided it was time to lock myself up and try to exorcize all the demons that have haunted me lately, get a bit of hold on myself and regain control upon my actions and feelings.

I still feel that I want to be out there, bantering with people I know or total strangers, be flirty and outrageous and do things I will surely regret the next day. So what if I have one too many drinks? - it's Friday! But tonight, I'm staying in! I am not sure I don't want to be out there, but I am sure I must do something about mental integrity. Changing job, moving house, hasn't been quite easy on me and I felt really restless and highly insecure. Drinking hasn't helped in the least. I am taking the mature way out of insecurity and try again. I hope to emerge stronger. I have no choice...

Living with Death

I keep my side of the escalator, holding tight to the gripping rubber. Sometimes at the rush hour on your way to work, you don't have much time to think about. You have to appreciate the posibility of sneaking into the Central Line overcrowded carriage just about the time when everyone else has already given up and mentally calculate how many minutes you'll be late today. You feel rather cheerful that you might be late actually only about 5 minutes, which is an achievement. Being constanly late at work is a sign of lack of excitement and I already know it in my heart that I ain't looking forward to much. Not even that large Costa latte as I am again obviously late.

I am keeping my side of the escalator looking at the faces passing me by in the opposite direction. Somehow I get to thinking that all of these people passing in front of my eyes will all be dead one day. It almost smelt of fresh corpses... I stopped for a moment to think of why in the world such thoughts occur and what I realize is that I am filling my lungs with air (to be fair, not the freshest air but air nevertheless) and try feel that air coming in and out of my lungs as if that would ensure my immortality. These days I find breathing a wonderful way of reminding myself I am alive.

I think of all the people that may be filling their lungs with the same or at least similar air and perhaps with the conscience that their future is a matter of days rather than a matter of years. How do you do it then? How do you carry on living when you know you are going to die? How do people think when Death is imminent?... I have always found conforting the fact that the future may be yet an unwriten page and I wonder what do you do when you know your future's been already written?...Perhaps by a doctor's hand writing down a diagnostic... What do you do first? Cry, scream, be angry, deny it, start running, fall on your knees, pray to
God, hope?...

It's funny how we don't manage to be able to acknowledge death.. Death has been given to us at birth and somehow we live our lives as if we are supposed to live forever, as if one day things will turn out the way we want it and all we have to do and sit around and wait for that amazing future to happen. What if it doesn't? What if we wake up one day and notice our time's up? Do we regret not having spent our lives better? Not having made fools of ourselves and pursue our silly little dreams, send those flowers to that person we are in love with, not having told the loved ones enough times how much we love them, not having closed our eyes when breathing in an out and be paralized with the happiness of being alive.
I keep my side of the escalator and look blankly at the advertising passing by. One day, different people will buy different things. For now, we are the ones alive!

Hunting for life

Flat hunting, job hunting, dating, it's all the same. Important, terribly exhausting and unsettling. Whether you're looking for the perfect job, the perfect match or a decent room, it's all about whether you'll just take whatever comes your way or keep looking until you get what you want. And, boy, I have plenty of experience in all of these aspects. Though lately I have consumed all my energy on viewing rooms and coming home to the point of exhaustion that I am telling myself before going to bed that I can't possibly look at any flats anymore and tell the story of my life for the hundredth time in a row, I know I have no choice but to keep on looking. And sadly it's the same in all the other aspects, though sometimes you simply feel you just have to give up.

The truth is no matter how much you liked a place a people that live in the house, you'll be waiting for a call back from them the same way you might be biting your nails waiting for that guy you really liked to follow up on your date. Or it may be the case that you get desperate calls from a household asking you to make up your mind and move in as soon as possible, the same way you are trying to convince a guy to stop pestering you. Or it may be that as much as the flat is nice, you just don't like the area and, the same way you had to refuse a job in Leeds a year ago, you'll have to pass on this one as well. And when you thought the sky will collapse on you and you'll find yourself on the street with a million boxes that basically summarize your life so far..., a friend or two step in to give you shelter while you are still looking for that place which you can call home, even if it's just for the next 6 months or so...

They say a person's happiness is somewhere in the middle of a perfectly formed triangle where love, job and home/social side meet. No wonder I've been feeling so strange these days: I have a new job which I am still adjusting to, no place to live and, unsurprisingly, no man in my life. No wonder I am unsettled considering I am running around in circles in the middle of nowhere, not even close to the life triangle, not to mention in the middle of it...

But thankfully, I have friends to get support and help from and, though the road keeps getting bumpier, my vital engine keeps getting stronger to make sure I'll get there someday. And if I have learned anything since I've started wining on this blog is that worrying is useless, things will work out one day, one way or another. You just have to keep on hunting. For a room. For a job. For love.

It's nice to be in Nice but it's so much nicer to be back...

Before starting this new post I wondered why google posted links about products that help with smelly feet... Sure that nothing I have written before had anything to do with sweaty soles, I decided to plunge into the subject o fthe day and start by saying it's nice to be in Nice, but God I am thankful that I live in London.

There has always been something about the French Riviera that has fascinated me since I was a child. From Brigitte Bardot movies and the decadent 70's style to Louis de Funes and his Gendarmes series, from Nice to Marseille and of course, Saint Tropez and Monte Carlo, that part of the world has played quite a remarkable role in the way I define my style today, altough I only set foot in Nice for the first time on Thursday this week.

Not that I thought I would find streets paved with gold and coquette mademoiselles wearing a head scarf and oversized Chanel sunglasses while driving a convertible, but Nice of today had nothing to make me go wow! What I found in Nice was that people had an annoying tendency to shush us everytime we had a conversation that could be heard, that restaurants hosts don't feel the need to explain why they let us waiting for 10 minutes before bothering to ask what we needed, that ocassionaly shoe shop assitants gave us the frown when asked to bring a shoe in a different size and that the beach is covered in pebbles that in all honesty hurt your feet so much when walking that it makes one forget all about the ice cold water.

However, what else I found in Nice was that in good company, every place in the world is a joy, that the plat du jour is undoubtfully the best meal choice, that my French is actually pretty decent, that the sun can be really pleasant even when lying on stones and that generally speaking I am absolutely grateful to be living in London, the city where you never get shushed, the place where you have the luxury to complain if you don't get served the way you should be, where people are generally friendly to people with an accent and where from I get to go away to the French Riviera everytime I feel like it and bring only the best back with me...