Right. Let’s sit down and have that recap we’ve been
promising ourselves
“Right,” he says, “write.”
So it’s just over a month since I’ve been back in England . It’s
not been a bad month; in fact, it’s been a decent month. Not the month I might
have feared when I was rolling around on a Mexico City couch in turmoil unable to sleep
when contemplating flying back to these shores. Nor the year like the last year
I was back in England ,
which was grim and awful and took me right to the edge.
It’s been fine. It’s been nice.
But has it been nice enough to want to prolong it?
Actually, in fairness, it’s mostly been me sitting on me
laptop doing daft things, which could be anywhere, and isn’t engaging with real
life at all – so difficult to judge real life on that.
But that’s a bit of a vague comment that doesn’t really fit
in with the general scheme of where I want to go with this, or what’s actually
in my head. So…
A month. Lots of places and people visited. All things
fulfilled. Everything ticked off the list. And now at that stage where
something new must occur; that stage where it’s either: sit down, stay in one
place, do the good ‘normal things’; or gad off on a plane to some other country
and continue the mad adventure.
Mostly I’m thinking the latter. Mostly I’m thinking of
rejoining that trail I was on – which means either jetting back to Mexico , or heading into lands unknown, somewhere
now East, not West, and Asia .
But first…some thoughts, numbered in a list, because they’re
not really connected and I don’t know how to make a chronological narrative of
them…
1.
A thought about my eyesight: this weird story I have wherein
my eyes went really bad when I came back to England in summer 2015, and were
scarily and upsettingly and depressingly bad for the whole time I was there –
after laser eye surgery in 2008; after running out on Mexico, because of
various things – and then the wonderful lovely thing of how they got better
again – went back to being good – after a month or so in Mexico, and everything
was groovy.
That’s weird, right? That eyes could go bad and then good
again. But true.
And I’d been to the opticians, and the opticians were cool –
English medical folk are always cool, I find – ‘cos instead of just prescribing
and taking money and sending me on my way, she asks questions about why I think
it’s happening, and suggests maybe it’s just stress.
Stress, huh? What kind of stress? I don’t really gots no
stresses in my life: only low-level stuff.
But then, low level stuff is sometimes enough for me: like
the times my face puffed up, just ‘cos of almost nothing really, and stopped
immediately when I sorted it, so…
Anyway. Yeah. I returned to Mexico . I noticed they were still
bad when I got there – inability to read the signs in Wal-Mart; the kids at the
back all blurry – and then, like I say, a few weeks down the line all those
things disappeared.
Except…whaddya know? The moment I get back to England ,
everything goes blurry again. I’m not stressed out. I’m not unhappy about being
here. And yet…
I immediately think, hm, I guess I won’t be staying here
long, huh?
Eyes are important. Being on the right track’s important.
Following my ‘soul’.
So it’s been a month and they’re still not what they were.
And I guess that means I’s gots to get out of here.
2.
I wrote a couple of things in recent months that suddenly
make total sense: one was how I found it weird that Mexican women paid me no
heed; and the other was how unattractive English people seemed, after all those
lovely faces and hair and beautiful brown cleavages.
And walking Yorkshire and Kent streets I totally realise why
the lack of attention: ‘cos we English folk are mostly pretty ugly, and even
living in a moderately attractive English face don’t mean nothing to them.
It’s like being the tallest dwarf. Like being a
five-foot-nine Chinaman. Like being great at football when you’re playing with
kids.
Ho hum: that’s slightly depressing.
And also needs a caveat: people in Norwich
were really attractive; and people in London
are really attractive.
But some o’ them other places I’ve been…
3.
Stark contrast to Leeds !
Once a city I loved.
Yeah, man, Norwich
was hip.
4.
And then London : same old
story, really, with London .
Some really groovy things, like the Saturday game of football, and several of
my most favouritest people in the world. And nice neighbourhoods to stroll
round, and a sense of things happening, and whatever you’re into, you can
totally find it, no matter how niche or strange.
A part of me thinks I could live there again. Good to be
around those people. Good to sense those possibilities. Good to remember when I
did live there, and cycled everywhere, and had my regular game, and even got
creative things done, despite the necessary busyness (and maybe because of it).
But – oh, man – the planes: the goddamn planes. Constantly
overhead. Constant droning din. Zero escape, even when in lovely park, in lush
green oasis garden.
Like I say: same old London
story.
5.
It does make it tempting, though: to be around good old
friends, and to finally be having interesting, long conversations after the
weirdness of [two paragraphs deleted here].
What a shame I can’t have both.
6.
Now I’m thinking of standing in the Sainsbury’s in Balham,
not long after I’d landed, and trying hard to perceive the characteristics of
the people around me: to contrast them with those Cabo Wal-Mart perceptions of
empty-headed and afraid North Americans and the content brown-eyed Mexicans
they wandered lost amongst. The lack of anger and aggression in Mexican faces.
The stresses written across English brows and eyes.
The best time to formulate a sense of a people is right when
you get off the plane, having been for some time somewhere completely
different. Like returning from China
and marvelling at how enormous everyone’s noses were (and how miserable they
looked).
And so, in Balham, what did I see, in that long snaking
queue for the self-checkout, standing there content with my bread and cheese?
I saw a line of people who looked…bored, and sort of worn
down. As though they’d been in prison long enough to have the fight knocked out
of them. Shuffling along in their shackles. On some sort of conveyor belt. No
longer struggling or striving, just wearily following its course till the end.
It was as though the lights had gone off. A group of
still-young people merely going through the motions.
I think I saw that a lot in London .
I suppose it could just be projection.
Mistaken.
More of a reflection of something inside me.
But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like something I’m
seeing.
And it reminded me of my early-twenties idea of England as
an old man in his rocking chair, having seen it all, done it all, and being now
tired beyond wearisome at the lack of novelty and newness life had to offer,
and yet having to continue to live it still – in contrast to the excited child
of the US, all giddy with possibility, but also kind of dumb.
Poor old London .
I’m sure it’s not really like that.
7.
And elsewhere in England ? Mostly it just seems to be
about buying stuff.
8.
So here we are. One month on, and back to where I was:
thinking of randomly flying to Asia , or to
renting a room in San Miguel de Allende and trying to sit down and write
(though not really the latter, now I mention it).
What else is there? Move to Exeter once more and find a little income and
do some typing? Play a game or two of football a week and get back into refereeing?
Slowly make some friends, and zoom up to London
every now and then, and…
Or hop on a plane to northern Spain and start the walk to
Santiago de Compostela and see what happens?
No signs, no dreams, but – running out of country and
options while I catch up with friends and fritter away the hours in internet
indulgences and generally be quite lazy while at the same time tying up loose
ends and still compulsively jettisoning possessions, till I’ve almost nothing
left, and…
Yes. Well. Those are the kind of paragraphs that generally
lead me on to long fruitless rambles about all the possibilities and confusions
– whereas what actually gets me moving forward is a simple recap of what was –
a pipe cleaning exercise – and a movement towards that place where I stand up
from the comp all empty and fresh and ready for the future to come greet me and
make itself known.
So what else is there from this recent past?
9.
I seed me mum, I seed me da.
I bought some trainers and some jeans – you’ll remember my not
being able to find any my size in tiny-personned Mexico (of course you’ll remember
that) – and I bought three laptops too (sent one back; will probably sell both
the others when I’m done).
I sold me solar panel. I’m down to about 15 litres of
possessions (ie, one little backpack).
I seed old chums. I went from Manchester
to Leeds to London to Kent
to London to Birmingham
to Leeds to Norwich to Whitby
to London to Kent
(which is where I am now; and then back to London mañana).
I did a couple of weeks of work, and put eight hundred quid
in the bank.
I played three games of football.
I ate lots of Kettle Chips and cheddar cheese, and had some
good ol’ Yorkshire fish ‘n’ chips (not
actually that good).
I faffed around online, pretty much whenever I could, ‘cos
I’m addicted and find it interesting and crave mental stimulation and can’t
think of owt else to do.
I wrote not a thing.
10.
That feels like pretty much it. My month is up. I don’t know
what to do next. Though that Malaysia
plane ticket is starting to loom large – and I even tossed a coin yesterday to
maybe buy one going in 11 days.
The coin said nope; I shall have to toss one later to see
about going in 4 days then.
11.
Mad old life, huh? I don’t expect anyone to understand it –
I barely do myself – nor to really understand this ‘writing’.
‘S’not as good as when I was gadding around the deserts in Mexico , is it,
just six weeks ago?
But it serves its purpose.
12.
I think I’ll quit facebook if I go away. Cease being so
connected.
I’ll be in a land I know nothing about, and have no interest
in researching, will just chuck myself in the river.
Best to be off grid: you never know who you’ll meet, or
what’s around the corner, when living like that.
Probably best to quit my metabunking too.
13.
That’s all.
