clinging to the wreckage

  I sit in the waiting room, scared, and it suddenly dawns on me how many experiences I have had in life. Serious and sometimes terrifying ones, as well as many fun ones, of course. Sitting here, now, it’s funereal. Yes, it is like being at a funeral. Wearing a jacket. Nervous. But the nerves start to disappear upon thinking of all the intense experiences of my life. At one point, in my younger years, they were almost too much to bear. Now, they often stir very little feeling, which, in a way, is sad. We grow older and become desensitized. In youth, if we are humble, we realize that we are lost in a world in which adults have experience and understanding, which they use to knit together the fabric of society, making things function. In our older years, we have so much experience ourselves that, even though there is so much to learn, and we understand that there are so many people with more knowledge than us, we know that we can hold our own in discussion, we are educated, we are ex...

  Christmas Eve used to be my favourite day and, even yesterday, I was thinking ‘tomorrow is my favourite day of the year.’ This was because it historically marked the beginning of a holiday that lasted into the beginning of January. It marked a time that most of humanity slowed down… together, for once, and enjoyed some peace and quiet and celebration. It was also historically a night that I was with my family, and we would all sleep under the same roof to awake to presents and feasts and parties. In later years, it became a night often spent with a lover or girlfriend, a night spent cooking and drinking, talking and laughing, kissing and being romantic. Today I rode my bicycle to a nearby restaurant for lunch, I sat at the bar and had a beer and a pizza. However, before the pizza arrived, a strange guy arrived and, even though the bar was empty, came to sit next to me. I eventually escaped, went home, then walked back and went to my regular bar. It was peaceful and pleasant. The ...

  At 04:30 I give up trying to sleep and make a cup of coffee. It’s the 15 th of November and the window is open because the weather is so pleasant. There’s an ever so slight movement of the air that pushes the smell of coffee to me. I’m so tired that it feels almost like a pleasant drug-induced state. Most of my friends are in the UK and Europe, so there are people to chat to. The American night is silent… most people have already arrived home from their late nights, and the early risers have not yet risen. Many people believe that if they wake up at 5am they will automatically become rich. It makes me smile. Most people either don’t have the discipline to wake up at 5am or, if they do, they wake up and doom scroll through Instagram or similar on their phones. Typically, when I am awake in the night, I am researching the stock market, reading a book, writing, having a conversation with Europe, or watching videos about life in Japan or Vietnam. I also spend a lot of time studying ...

  I found a postcard that I had written 8 years ago, but, of course, I had never sent or delivered it. It was to a girl I worked with in Madrid. She was from Romania but was, essentially, Spanish. She had lived there for many years. I was enamoured, desirous… she was an absolutely spectacular being. The postcard captured some of the beautiful moments that we had shared; breakfast in a tiny kitchen in a quiet corner of the office, sharing cake that her mother had baked, talking at the bus stop, a long romantic walk, arm in arm, a cocktail in the shade under the Madrid sun whilst I touched the skin that showed through a fashionable tear in her jeans. She was magnetic. Absolutely irresistible. Yet, she was also wonderfully helpful and friendly. She helped me to cross-reference and validate the bibliography of my Master’s thesis, a task that I dreaded, and I was eternally grateful for that. Then I left Spain and moved to the USA. I visited her twice after that, but she seemed elusive a...

Everyone simply rushes back to the office… and it is chaos. Everything is chaos. The roads are full, the elevators are full, the toilets are full. It’s a mess and no one is happy. It’s a tragedy that so many live a life of misery because they need money to pay for bills.                     The past dies. During the pandemic in 2020, we grasped for the past and longed to return to 2019. However, by 2021’s end we were forging a new life, a better life. We were returning, more grateful, and we were changing our way of life to match our own goals and desires. We were striving for a balance that would allow us to work and contribute whilst also traveling or spending time with family or doing household chores that would free up more time in the evenings and the weekends. Companies were just as productive, if not more so, and people were happier.           ...

You say ‘I miss you’ or ‘I love you’, but you don’t… you want to feel forgiven for the wrongs you have done. You claim to help people… you simply want to know about their lives, their salaries, their hopes and dreams, and, in the end, you want them to feel that they owe you something. You try to control everyone and everything. You pretend to be calm, charming, and funny, but inside you are burning with rage. It fills you with rage when someone lives differently to how you feel life should be lived. You think that everyone is lazy and immature and incapable of doing the work that you do. But what do you do? It seems your goal is only to control, to seek power, to break up friendships, to kill anything that motivates, inspires, and engages people. I understand now why you voted the way that you did. Selfish people vote for selfish people. Narcissists vote for people who remind them of themselves.                 ...