clinging to the wreckage

  Everyone around me is getting younger. Or so it seems. And I need to slap myself in the face for giving in to the concept of being old, a concept I managed to defeat in my thirties but one which appears to have crept back in in the last couple of years. I turned fifty-three three weeks ago and, yes, to most of you out there that is ancient, that is prehistoric, that is dinosauric… but I am generation x, not a baby boomer, so it is not over yet. I don’t cling to traditions or refuse to adopt evolving technologies. I don’t preach traditional behaviours to people, and I encourage them to live freely.                     From time to time my knees may remind me of the passing of years. On other occasions it will be the plethora of memories and experiences that I am able to draw upon and surprise even myself with how far back they go. I recall, in the 1990s thinking that 1965 was ancient history…...

  Exactly ten years ago today I arrived in the USA. It’s been an incredible journey. The 29 th of September 2016 I spent my last night in Madrid with my girlfriend, and the following morning flew to Boston to begin a new life. Ironically, the opportunity I’d always wanted came about once I had fallen in love with Madrid and felt that I would be there for the rest of my life.                     It seemed like an eternity, but it was only two and a half years later that I received my Green Card. That is very fortunate. And only two years ago I received my citizenship. It makes me very proud to be both a British and American citizen. My only regret is that my mother passed away before I became a citizen, and I know she would have been really happy to see it happen. She would not have been so happy with the political twist that came shortly afterwards.         ...

  Hope is not always as loud as bad news, but it exists. Hope is what we need. And to stop living with so much worry about what might not happen. The meeting that you are dreading may turn out to be fun, interactive, and productive. Even if it is not, it will be something that helps you to learn… and leaves you feeling better once it is over.                     I often worry about health… sometimes due to genetics and other times due to my own poor choices, but I often feel peaceful, happy, and hopeful in a regular evening at home, reading a book or watching a film, grateful for the opportunity I have had to build a life that has involved travel, romance and love, exploration, art and culture, whilst building financial security and freedom. I still get excited about learning, about creating, about attending a museum or a concert, and about meeting new people upon my travels… even if that is j...

  In 1999, during my first ever trip to the USA, I stayed with a couple that employed me for a few months at their small company. I spent hours searching for that address today and couldn’t find it in any old journals or notes. Then, like magic, I found an email from them from 2009 saying the house had been demolished in 2008. I went to google maps and was looking for familiar road shapes in the street and as I was sliding along a few yards at a time, the Google Maps photos suddenly jumped from 2026 to 2011 and, there it was, a house disappeared (the new one) showing the empty space where the old one used to be. Just one frame, a time lapse, showing the gap and allowing me to put the pieces of the puzzle together.   It is incredible that, at the time, I was desperate to move to the US, but it seemed absolutely impossible. Seventeen years later, I moved to the US through work and, twenty-seven years later, I now live just over four hours south of where I lived in Tulsa. Sadly, ...

  Sitting at Bird’s Fort Trail Park and reading a book, and it’s really an odd experience because, although surrounded by trees, a river, nature, there is a shooting range somewhere in the vicinity and the sound of guns being fired is constant. Not exactly harmonious with the otherwise beautiful surroundings.                     Finishing there I drive to the record store and buy the new Menzingers album, Everything I Ever Saw . It has been a lengthy period of time since I last went there and I have been meaning to visit for quite some time, so this album was the perfect excuse to visit… and I had time to kill before going for lunch at Ojos Locos. Now I am sitting at The Ginger Man, surrounded by magnificent beauty.                     A Saturday of debauchery… because I am really tired of society. I am t...

  I did something that I have not done before… I threw a book to the floor in horror and could read no more. On and off I have been reading Eileen Chang’s Half a lifelong romance , I have been reading other books at the same time. I love Eileen Chang… and was enjoying this book. However, I felt that it started to become a bit frivolous in the sense that it was like a teenage romance… Chang, I now believe, was doing this deliberately because, unexpectedly, the book punched me in the face with its depiction of cruelty and violence and pain. It opened my eyes even more to mankind’s capacity for cruelty and selfishness. How people will even collaborate against their own family, causing pain and destruction, to achieve their own selfish goals.                     Deciding that I probably could not continue to read the book… at least not in the short term, I immediately asked Copilot to outline the ...