clinging to the wreckage

  There is nothing better than to be able to take a walk through a street or an area in which there is life… to enter a bar and order a cold beer, to take a sip and ponder life... or chat to random strangers or make new friends. There have been times in my life that I have been in relationships in which I simply felt trapped and suffocated and an unbearable desire to get up and leave and be alone. In all of my ‘romantic’ relationships I have felt a need to entertain, to host, to ensure that my partner is not bored… and the simple things in life are usually no longer an option. Even if they are, they become a prison themselves when everything has a limit or a restriction or an expectation. For me, single life is the only life that I can live now.                     Do people get married because they have lost all sense of curiosity and adventure? Do they do it for a desire for sex and they can...

  After a week in France, a mixture of stress and joy... the stress of giving a presentation juxtaposed with the joy of walking beside the sea at night, drinking delicious wine and eating amazing food, it was time to take a week off in Spain. People move, change, get married, have kids, go silent, disappear, but Madrid still goes on as it always has. People leave and disappear because Madrid is a party city… it is a city for the single, for the traveller, for the adventurer. It is also no longer a cheap city. It leaves an emptiness to visit a city in which one has lived and experienced so much love and adventure only to discover that all of that is deeply in the past. People hide… or simply don’t bother to reply… until after one has departed.                     Suddenly the silence sinks into a peaceful solace. I am grateful to be free to explore freely and spend the day as I please, without ...

  Sitting on the metro in Madrid, travelling from Ventas to Plaza de España… the first or second stop brought a vision of beauty beyond belief at the window. She was waiting to board the train and I could not help but smile at her. She smiled back. She stepped onto the train coyly and, after a little twirl and swirl, sat beside me. I was struggling to breathe and to cope with my heartbeat speed. I looked at our reflection in the window and we both had a grin on our face. The heat rose from within and I was staring at her shoes, her socks, I was seeking something… something to say. She started to message on her phone but almost as if she was trying to show me what was on the screen. My eyes flickered over it and I could see that her messages were in English. I pulled my headphones off and she seemed expectant. I looked at her face, it was beautiful, with a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. And, yet, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t speak. We pulled into Sol and she got up and left. ...

  I use social media to let people know I am still alive when I don’t show up at the bar in Dallas. Beyond that, I find myself increasingly disconnected from, and troubled by, social media. It’s the era of everyone believing they are a star… the whole world is watching them every moment of the day. No talent or training required, no unique character needed.   Alas, I am currently in Madrid, Spain, after a week in the South of France. France was work, this is holiday… but I am surrounded by people who are at a company event, and it makes me feel like I am working. It should not trouble me, the view is beautiful and the alcohol is flowing. Madrid is a wonderful city, my old home, one I cannot get tired of. It seems a little busier these days, but that may be because I am used to living in Texas where there is more space and less people.                     In terms of global events, it was ...

  25 years ago I wrote my name in a book I had just bought. I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma (I wrote Oklahoma like a drunk guy, but did not drink at the time). At the time the book was 82 years old and now it is 107. Demian, by Hermann Hesse. The book is about finding meaning and one’s inner self in a world that is on the brink of war. Two months after reading it, I flew American Airlines over the twin towers in New York, exactly two weeks before they were destroyed. 25 years later, I’ve just re-read the book. We are at war. I’m in Madrid, Spain, but now live as a British American in the USA. Times passes rapidly and so many suffer in this unspeakably cruel world. Yet there is also profound beauty, and all we can do is to try to make the most of it along the way. be kind to people. Smile. Survive.

  Everything is a reflection of the times. Popular culture reflects what people are feeling. In the 1890s we had Frankenstein and Dracula because it was not possible, then, to speak directly about the geo-political situation and the changes that drove society to fear. The railroads were taking over, nature was being destroyed, and mankind was terrified. If you launch your streaming platforms of choice today you will discover that most films are some form of gothic horror… this is because mankind is once more terrified of things such as AI, but, even more so, a leadership of ‘the most powerful nation on earth’ that is simply pathetic in its volatility due to insecurity. Just open the ‘GIFs’ section of any app that you are using, and they reflect what is happening at the present time. Memes, too. Through memes we can see that people really hate their jobs, they hate waking up early to commute through traffic to sit in an office. However, due to the extensive lay offs we are seeing, p...