Shackled by the future

I’m in an annoying frame of mind at the moment. Or, as I’m a modern young thing, I suppose I should say I find myself in “a weird place”. That place is causing me no amount of anxiety.

I am terrorised by ideas and plans. I am putting none of them into practice. They are appearing in my head like a bolt of lightning – some of them, I have to be honest, are quite brilliant and unique – and, like lightning, they disappear. Well, they’re still around in my head, but are weighed down by my total and absolute lack of energy and drive. How can I be so buzzing with ideas yet so unable to make them happen?

Part of me is really making the most of life. But a bigger part is too anxious for the future; too concerned that life is so short that I must (we all must) seize the day. I can plan to seize, but I can’t do the seizing.

Oh for an unthinking life…

Another frozen moment

Got a light? I was asked by a tired and hassled middle-aged woman with a weathered jowl and a desperate voice. I obliged but before lighting her stick of relief, she told me she’d been to a funeral. Smokers will always excuse their habit as a matter of, well, habit. My task finished, her stick alit, I looked her in the eye and wished a good day as she swivelled off. She half-turned around and smiled, as if to suggest her day could hardly get any worse. It always can, of course, but I hope it doesn’t. And there, in those few moments, we had a little connection. She was possibly homeless; her orange Sainsbury’s bags were stretched to capacity with cans of Fosters, and she was grasping a half-consumed plastic glass of what appeared to be cranberry juice, always a crafty vehicle for something far less wholesome and far more alcoholic. I hope she didn’t drink herself into a stupor.

Challenge conventions

Having such a tiny laptop is a great gift. With my hands shaking like someone with Parkinson’s, I’ve not got a hope of managing with a pen and paper. It’s like having the gift of writing again; where I can write whatever I want, whenever I want. In a café, on a bus, standing on a street even. Writing lets me question the aspects of life that are too quickly brushed under the carpet. Life should always be questioned and scrutinised, even when you are utterly, emphatically certain about one thing or another. Challenge it. Provide your own angle (marketing speak); attack it, stroke it, sympathise and disagree with it.

Peace and anger within minutes of eachother

Irritable yet harmless glances to the idiot with his umbrella. Only the frail or porous should be permitted umbrellas, the 21^st century’s evil. They are utterly at odds with the modern world; a vibrant city reduced to the pace at which the bereaved stumble in hospitals. Eye-poking evils.

 

I asked Starbucks employee if she knew whether their wireless internet was working. “Only half hour,” she said, mopping my table with surprising diligence, “no sure if internet. I only here half hour! Just started!” I asked her how her day was going, whether the 21^st century’s latest con was supporting her well. She’d only been there half an hour but nevertheless said yes. I looked her in the eye and said good. I was pleased for her. And her needful eyes acknowledged it. One little tiny forgettable moment for both of us. But, perhaps for the next few minutes or maybe a whole hour, her nerves might lessen and that broad colgate smile might dazzle some more customers. A moment frozen in time, perhaps forever as I’m documenting it. If half the world’s population did this – smiled, said hello, thanked people for opening doors, touched the frail on the shoulder to offer sympathy (if not actual physical support) when they crumble through a shop doorway – maybe the world would be significantly calmer, friendlier and more humane.