Counting the Years

It's either very late, or it's very, very early.


My living room lights are set to a low setting. There is an odd combination of Hemant Kumar and Joan Baez playing softly on my laptop. And while I sip a glass of red wine, I write this post.


Because today, it is my 31st birthday.


I've never been much of a birthday guy. Growing up, birthdays were mostly small, private family affairs. We never did big public celebrations. As the son of parents with a hectic social life due to my father's professional responsibilities, family celebrations were characteristically personal. There would be a cake (quite frequently Black Forest) with candles. There would be presents, but never elaborate ones. Small, discreet, tasteful. There would be fine china laid out on the dining table (always impeccably dressed up itself in my mother's finest linen) and there would be your favourite food as part of the meal. But I can look back at all my birthdays growing up as being incredibly private affairs.


Things have changed recently though.


For the past few years, my birthdays have become a bit of a "thing" on my friends' social calendars. Coming as it does in January, there has been increasing pressure over the years to make it count, and to make sure that it is spectacular enough to overcome the January blues. And so they've become bigger, bolder, more fabulous each year. 


There was the year when I took a massive group of friends out to a Vauxhall nightclub for that uniquely British thing - roller disco. Oh, how they all mocked, groaned and scoffed when the invitation was sent out. Only to be recorded in every photo taken that night grinning like a child as they careened across a wooden floor, vodka & tonic in one hand, other arm outstretched as they clung desperately to a balance that could escape at any second. (There might have been some bruises the next day)


There was that other year too, when the only way to bring in my flirty thirties was to organise a Bollywood-style fancy dress party. There was the friend who came and DJ'ed the whole night. There was the coordinated dance routine. There was a Santa Claus. There was even a Ukrainian belly dancer. All in the name of Bollywood.


And even I, the eternal melancholic, has to admit that things could be worse. 


So here I sit. Hands on my laptop. Sipping some wine, and drinking to my own health. It is a night I ring in another year, a night I look back at the year past, and celebrate, amongst many things, the fact that I've survived another year on this planet. Which, given how horrible this planet can be to people, is not a bad thing. 


But it is a year that brings with it much promise. The promise of change. The promise of hope. The promise of despondency. And the promise of... life. 


Which is not something to be taken lightly.


Perhaps it is a consequence of old age, but I have become even more introspective with age. And so, oddly enough, the first thing that came into my head as the clock struck midnight was how I've lived my life. 


And again, I cannot complain.


There are things I've done that I'm incredibly proud of. There are things I've done that I cannot decipher, but that I am very glad I've done. And then there are things I've done without quite figuring out to this day why I did them.


So here, in no particular order of importance, are ten things I am proud I've done. 


1. I went backpacking. On the cheap. If ever there was a stereotype, it's that the best way to see a place is to do it on the rough. And boy, can I tell you, doing Asia on the rough is... ROUGH. I think that at certain angles, my butt will still feel the impact of a bad seat in a ramshackle van and the worst of Java's roads. But also of the fun that came with it.


2. I've skinny dipped. Not being someone who lives in either a C-grade porn flick or a bad Hollywood horror movie, this is not something I ever thought I'd do. But it's amazing what the combination of a wedding by a lake in upstate New York, poisonous amounts of alcohol and a warm July night can do.


3. I've had random, hot, sweaty, anonymous sex. Not once, not twice, not from a relationship perspective, but the ultimate in rough & tumble slap & tickle.


4. I've had dull, boring, it's-a-Sunday-morning-and-you're-here-in-bed-well-why-not sex. Which, though not really exciting, can be incredibly satisfying. Especially when you're hungover.


5. I've been to a movie premiere. In London. With real celebrities. Sadly, my own celebrity status was not appreciated.


6. I've got street credit in some awesome cities. I can get into high demand places in Barcelona, New York, Hong Kong and Berlin. Just because. 


7. I've had my heart broken. Badly.


8. I've cried in public in an unhappy place. It was in Auschwitz. It was horrible. It was important to see.


9. I've cried in public in a happy place. It was in Angkor Wat. It was beautiful. It was one of the best moments of my life.


10. I've broken into song & dance in a street. Because every so often, it's important to do that. Even if you don't live in a Bollywood movie.


None of which is spectacular, or exceptionally awesome, but is actually pretty fucking cool when taking collectively. Or so I'd like to think.


And so, I think it's fair to say that it's not been a life I can regret. Or resent. 


So I guess I can say this now: Happy Birthday to Me.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another excerpt from the story that I'm currently working on. Something I've refined this evening, during yet another spell of insomnia.

Where is the place that all stories begin? Is there a single point from which all our narratives flow, a single indescribable nucleus, where all our pasts, our presents and our histories are determined? And if such a point exists, could we ever trace our steps back to that place, that wellspring of our human-ness, to redraw the paradoxes and petty tragedies of our frail existences? Is it that, then, which we seek all the time as we go through life, apparently aimless but in actuality searching for that which can never be found?

She has a story too. But perhaps the only truth in that story, hidden deep within a web of perceptions, opinions and delusions is that it has no single beginning. Like all stories, it is born anew at every single instant, but also dies in that instant, and is condemned to never be repeated ever again. For her story, like all stories, is nothing more than a string of innumerable instances, microcosms and random events intricately strung together, which each moment almost bearing no relation to the one that came immediately before, or the one that will follow it only a second later

And that is why when she looks for a place to begin, to find out where it all started and where things were inexorably set it motion (oh, that cliché), she is unable to identify a single point, a single over-arching instant in her life to start.

But stories are born to be lived, to be told, to be passed on from the lips of one generation to the next, carrying within them the seeds of destruction that all humanity is inherently drawn to. Years later, she will look back onto that night and recognise that it was her one chance at sanity, for succour, and yes, for redemption. But that redemption can only be achieved through her narration, standing in an invisible confessional box, her past lives and sins surrounding her as clearly as angels and demons richly carved in dark mahogany.

And so she must find a place to begin, to find a single place in her past from where she can stand and begin to draw the tangled threads of her past three years into a single cohesive weave, finding patterns and order where none perhaps have, never will exist. On this night, as she drives all through the night through the rain that hammers the North Indian plains in August, smoking endless cigarette after cigarette, she will force herself to remember.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another late night in London.

My insomnia kicks in on the strangest days. Today, after a week of insanely busy days at work, with a social calendar that's packed to the brim, I thought I would sleep like a baby. Fat chance. It's now 2:30 and I'm still awake; bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, willing to go out for a run, or a drink, or both. Probably not a good idea, but there you go.

So here I am, in a garret bedroom in Notting Hill, with the windows open on this warm summer night. My laptop is warm on my lap; the duvet lies pushed down around the end of the bed. I've got Florence + The Machine playing on Spotify, and a table fan whirring softly in the corner.

It's at moments like this that I have to love my life.

Nothing special, nothing important. Just a single moment when I can look around, at a life that I've built slowly, painstakingly, bit by bit. I've gotten to a place where I think I am, if not happy, then at least...serene, calm, comfortable.

Not content, though. Never content. Always trying, always struggling, always reaching. Things need to be done, places must be visited, lives must be improved upon. It is difficult to not always want to achieve. Especially when in my own head there are so many failures, so many shortcomings, to compensate for.

Dreams, ambitions, goals. All shorthand for the misery that we can cause ourselves by wishing for too much. For trying too hard. For staying so hooked into the whole system that we forget to stop and measure the moments, minute, infinitesimal, that make up this fragile life of ours.

I think it was a schoolteacher - one of the Dominican friars at my Catholic school in Namibia - that introduced me to the Latin saying, per aspera ad astra. To the stars through difficulties. The same teacher told me that if you aimed for the stars, you'd get to the treetops.

And I always wondered how unsatisfying those treetops would be, especially when you kept looking at the stars that you missed out on.

Self-Centred Introspection

A half moon rises over the high rise council estate flats of Notting Hill.

Deprivation.

The moon is blood red. Dust in the air, prismatic reflections of pale light. Wisps of cloud fleetingly linger over the semi-circular cusp of reddish-white in the air.

Il pleut toujour sur les maisons de Londres a minuit.

My heart - the half that remains with me - cries with the weather. The other half, the half that I gave you; the half that you wrenched away from me - rests with you. Happy, sad, uncaring, I know not.

Do you stay awake at midnight, wondering if I'm thinking of you, the way that I do, standing here at the window of a garret room in West London, staring at a moon that stays suspended mid-air, close enough to reach out and touch, far away enough to be just out of reach?

I don't want to fuck up anything. I just want to be with you.

But its too late for that. I've already fucked things up, taken it to a point where we're beyond redemption. And now all that is left to me is this moment, standing alone in a cold room in an empty apartment, where all that is left to keep me company are my memories.

And this, a blood-red half-moon, lingering in front of my face, the way that you do.

Just out of touch.

Self-Centred Introspection

He sits, eyes, closed, on the Bakerloo line, right opposite him. Hair black, his Japanese eyes screwed tightly shut, mere slits against a face pockmarked with rashes and pimples. The faded grey of his backpack (waterproof, durable, outdoorsy, careworn, used) flat on his lap. His fingers, - rapid, prismatic, a blur – move the small plastic cube, almost inexorably.

Turning, turning, turning.

The tyranny of symmetry. The rules are simple: red adjacent to red, blue next to blue. Orange all on one side, white on another. Miscegenation is the enemy, order, purity, a bland monotony the idyll to be striven for.

It has taken the man only two stops (Baker Street to Edgeware Road) to complete the Rubik’s cube.

***

He walks calmly into the stationers. Stillness. Life here is calm, ordered, comprehensible. In the neat ruled sheets of Pukka Pads, in front of the walls of coloured plastic folders, ring binders and clutch pencils he finds a strange tranquillity. Things are not complicated here, decisions lose the menace of their implications. His decisions are bounded by the cardboard ends of the notebooks that he peruses. Sex is merely the static that burns his fingertips as he runs his hand against the wall of paper in a brightly lit store in Notting Hill. Simplicity.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another night, another memory of you.

I always sleep naked. My skin, hot, feverish, sexual, burns against the cold touch of the duvet cover. Normally, your naked form next to me kept me warm, the pale expanse of your back a figura to warm myself against in the cold of the London night. But you've left, so I'm left here to my own devices as I look to warm myself in this, the coldest of London summers.

Damn you. You left me bereft of everything.

But still, we soldier on. Call me a hundred times, and I'll come to you, atleast a hundred times. It's the price I pay for giving you my heart that one, innocent time. If I weep from one eye, then you tell me - how can I keep the other one closed?

Self-Centred Introspection

A few years ago, someone in New York gave me a black Moleskine notebook, and told me that I should use it to write down my thoughts when I'm feeling pensive. I took the book, and then forgot about it for a couple of years. Last year though, while packing for my six months of travels, I found that notebook in my desk drawer and decided to take it on a whim with me.

Funnily enough, I started writing in it only about half-way through my travels, when I felt that I had accumulated so much to say and write that I had to put it down before I forgot. So I finally started the first entry one afternoon in Angkor Wat, after spending several hours contemplating the incredibly humid, worn-down beauty of the temples there. Since that happy time, I've begun carrying it around even though I'm no longer travelling and will often scribble a few sentences in it. Usually this happens when I'm on the tube in London, since public transport allows you to observe so many different people anonymously, while letting you stay secluded in your own little world.

So from today, I'm going to start (selectively) putting up some of the excerpts that I've written down. I'm going to tag these posts "Self-Centred Introspection" since that's exactly what they are - my thoughts about me and my life, with no real purpose, meaning or intent.

So here it is - the first one.

Today I’m at peace. Things are calmer, my thinking is clearer. I understand what it is that I need to keep me happy.

That doesn’t mean that I am automatically happier. But that I know – intellectually, rationally, calmly – what it is that I need to do to be so.

Tourists wearing A&F in the District Line. My eyes shut, I see flashes of your naked chest as I rest my head on it. The sexy, acrid smell of your armpits, the hair brown & curling; I can hear your sighs as I recall our lovemaking.

The air in this train is cold, crisp, damp. Spanish filters through the soft strains of the music on my iPod. I rejoice in the minute details. The ruff of my jacket against my neck, unshaven, scented, stubbly. The taste of that last beer lingers in my mouth. The cold of the glass partition seeping into my shoulder as I lean against it.

I am told that memories are made of this.