Oxford St is now a parking lot. I foolishly caught a bus, sat in sweltering heat, next to a cranky Muslim woman glaring a my tank top wearing self, while three devastatingly handsome men walked past the bus and disappeared into the difference before I could get to the next stop. I am not happy about this.
- Posted from my iPhone
Home is a complex thing to me, maybe it is to all of us. Although the way some people talk about it, it seems to be a simple and solid certainty to them. A foundation that grounds their lives and gives them stability. It must be a beautiful thing, to live like that.
Thats not something I have ever really had, thanks to my parents heroic self interest, determined and proactive lack of care for their children. Certainty was something I built for myself as a child.
The smell of night blooming jasmine on a warm and silent night is probably the closest I can come to sense of childhood comfort, but home has never been a place. I keep hoping that one day there will be somewhere. I even have a plan to build a place to call my own. Whether that sort of intellectualisation and planning can manufacture an intangible is a question I am yet to answer. We'll see.
Once, for a while, home was a someone. Someone who made the world feel safe and certain. But betrayal showed that to be bungalow built on sand, waiting for the tide. It's a great pity. That sense of trust is one thing I truly miss, and it's passing one of the very, very few regrets I have.
I don't think I will ever see that purity of belief again, but I hope that I am wrong.
At least that has made me very conscious and very, very careful of others trust. Not something I would care to be responsible for breaking. That must be a dreadful burden to carry.
But there are tin men, who don't care. Beautifully made of shining steel but with no heart, to whom it wouldn't matter. The worst of them don't care, and the best seek to find something to fill their strong chests. Maybe I am one myself, but I prefer to think I am made of straw. It's not my heart but my silly head that's the problem.
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I started writing this a few months ago, on my iPhone. At the time I found the small form factor great for somethings, but essay writing was not one of them. Now my iPad is here, I ace no excuse to write more.
This post is melancholy, coming at a time when I had some sad news about the fortunes of someone I care(d) for. Day to day, I do feel like London is becoming my home. Certainly I love both the people I live with and those who share my life.
A place I will call home is still in my future. And I think that there will be someone to share that with. Recent events have shown me there are people who I could see myself doing that with, even if they are not themselves the one, or the time isn't now.
Right now it's the height of a glorious English Summer. The sun is shining, the grass is green and the flowers in the parks are glorious. There is even the smell of night blooming jasmine from a garden not far from my apartment, and on warm still nights, the smell steals into my room and in my sleep wraps it's arms around me and I wake up feeling safe and at peace.
-- Post From My iPad
Location:Baker St,Paddington,United Kingdom
The label inside my underpants.
Ignoring for a moment that I am wearing Lonsdales, they are slightly alarming.
I would have thought this was abundantly self evident. Not the size, I mean the keep away from fire bit.
- Posted from my iPhone
Haven't I heard Phil Hewson or Brent Nicols play this sequence before?
I have to admit that upon arrival, I found London's constantly changing street names and scatter shot numbering frightening, frustrating and confusing. I doubt I am the only person.
There are streets that literally change names 4 times in 100 meters with no intervening or indicative change in direction or even intersection. There is a spot, on my very street, almost outside my very house where the street changes it's name for 5 houses and then mystifyinglychanges back.
And it only changes on one side. The otherwise remains serenely undisturbed.
As for numbering, that's a whole other Escheresq nightmare.
Some streets alternate numbers side to side, others run up one side and down the opposite. Yet others just start where they like and skip numbers randomly.
My building doesn't have a number at all as far as I, the current owners, the previous owners, other residents on the building and the City of Westminster have been able to tell. Instead it has a name, which is charming but difficult to give directions to. I have even found a street that literally has no discernable order at all.
All of which contributed to me, on a number of occasions becoming famously lost. Long evenings were spent circling around the streets of London in search of some (reputedly) fabulous cocktail party or other and ending up with me sitting crying, sober and unfulfilled on a gutter until a nice member of the constabulary found me and kindly took me home.
Or on one occasion to their house, which is another story entirely, but suffice to say ended well for all concerned.
Now that I have been a resident in Britains great capital, things have changed. The once seemingly malice driven street planning now makes enough sense that I don't get lost (often) while London's constantly changing street names and random numbering has become charming quaint and endearing.
Not to mention the almost endless entertainment to be had watching tourists, and new arrivals, find my beloved city's baroque urban planning idiosyncrasies frightening, frustrating and confusing.
I could, of course, offer my assistance, but then where would the fun be in that?
Even if you don't believe that the iPad is come from on high to save us all, you have to admit its though provoking piece of kit. The Blog and twitterspheres are alive with speculation that it has come to smite the publishing industry in the same way that the iPod has music, the iPhone has the Telcos and the AppleTV has the failed to do to the TV and Film industry (but the iPad itself might).
There is clearly potential here for something new to arise that is more than just books. The Kindle and Nook may have blazed a trail, but its the iPad that is capturing people attention. People are starting to explore the possabilities - and they are exciting.
The best thing I have read so far on this is @CraigMod, so I thought I would share.
I discovered in the mail this week, buried in the recent treaty between the Royal Mail and the Postal workers Union, a snippet that was of passing interest. A detail that seems to have whizzed past most people attention.
Specifically, the long standing clause limiting the amount of junk mail that can be delivered is being, if not scrapped, then watered down, meaning that we could all be about to be having trouble getting our front doors open for the snow drifts of "personal offers" and pizza menus.
Marvellous.
Now there is a way to get yourself off the junk mail list, google it if you are interested, but what interested me in this is that Royal Mail is largely dependant on the revenue from junk mail delivery to remain solvent. Now while I dont actually like junk mail, given I would like the lack of the Royal Mail SIGNIFICANTLY more, this gave me pause. The bright digital utopian future of the paperless world is not with us yet, and probably wont be until we develop site to site transporter technology. So until that day, real things will need to be shoved through meatspace. While that has to happen, organisations like the Royal Mail have an important role to play.
Personally I would rather be giving my money to an effectively not-for-profit organisation rather than, say, Richard Branson or that little man from Ryanair.
But how big a deal is it, really, to sort and throw out the unwanted advertising? If you do it each day, not so much really.
To be honest, there is a small evil pleasure. Each time I throw out those badly designed eyesores, I can see pennies from some mindless advertiser washing down the drain. they're advertising messages are not getting into my brain, they are waisting their effort.
So for the time being, I am not going to block junk mail. I am going to do a little to help Royal Mail stay afloat and sort the unwanted advertising straight to the recycling.
I just spotted this
As much as I am going to miss David Tennant, they are managing to get me excited about the new series. A year without much to watch is probably part of that too. I can't wait to get back to "Who".
On this day in 1969 the following happened:
> The first Teacher's Day in Thailand was celebrated
> National Religious Freedom Day in the United State
> Two manned Soviet Soyuz spaceships became the first vehicles to dock in space and transfer personnel.
The gestures were appreciated, but most people just sent a card or flowers to my family to commemorate my birth. My parents were touched, particularly by the thing with the Russians - but then I can trace some of my heritage back to Tsarist Nobility, so they probably felt they should do something.
I am not quite sure what the Americans were up to. Perhaps they expected a religion to be founded around me. It hasnt happened so far, apart from that thing in Algiers, and I am not sure that counts.
A year later for my first birthday Colonel Muammar Gaddafi assumed the role of "Prime Minister" four months after leading a successful coup against the Lybian monarchy - which was nice don't you think.
Festive, and an example of the universe being a zero sum game. I was suddenly in it and, after what was a pretty touch and go first year somewhat miraculously alive. There needed to be a counter balance of fashion free, rhythmless, domineering evil peversity to counter balance my shining beneficence.
It's my birthday, let me live in a dreamland for today. Ok?
