Just a quick post and somewhat unusually, a personal one.I'm back in Toronto. I went to a "Pimps and Hos" fancy dress party on Saturday with Kevin and Nora, as a pimp obviously (photos to follow). The rental car agency picked up a Chrysler 300 for me, which was nice so I have the car for the outfit I was wearing.
Work is crazy as ever and I'm attempting to juggle the requirements of my boss, the corporate deadlines, the management of the Toronto operation, the team in Costa Rica and some third-party suppliers .
I don't get much time off, work six days per week most weeks and late most days. The pressure from all sides is grinding me down and I need a vacation, not necessarily a go somewhere vacation, but some do nothing time. That and to sort out some personal stuff, the refinancing of my apartment and tax in Gibraltar, buying a place in either Canada, for investment or Costa Rica, to live in, sorting out the some new furniture for the place in Gibraltar, finding out where my motorcycles are. Just some time off where I will allow myself no excuses not to hit the gym every day for a couple of weeks. I have put on far too much weight working here. It feels like I am on this treadmill and will be on it for another six months and I cannot actually imagine what it will be like when I get off.
Must remember my mum's birthday and Mother's Day, which is on the 26th of March in the UK, in the US it's the 14th of May. I know because mum reminded me, so there will be more internet shopping to be done or will have to run the guilt gauntlet for a whole year.
The other night I had a vivid dream, my friend David and I were riding bright orange KTM off-road motorcycles through lush tropical woodland in Costa Rica, popping wheelies and laughing, we were young again without a care in the world. I was so happy in my dream, somehow after waking up, it made me so very sad.
I miss my family; friends Amanda and David in England and so many more; John in Italy; Kay in Gibraltar; Ken, Anas and his wife Lourdes in Spain. I spend moments missing Lucy in Australia, missing Karyn in the US, my cousin Mark in Wales and so many others whom I hold dear and the chances are, if you are reading this, you are one of them.
6 comments:
(Amazing pics.!!!)
...You reminded me of this poem:
QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL
There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.
Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?
But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
--Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
--A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
--Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
--Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
--And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:
"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?
Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"
.-Elizabeth Bishop
Jase;
Easy to say "you're working too hard" but how to stop when you're in the midst of something? The main thing is to see the end of it at some point. After all, do we live to work or work to live, and you are missing out on chances to meet your next wife (I am waiting for a chance to go to a wedding, and Gibraltar would be nice).
O my darling J. I loved being a gyspy...railed against settling. Now, I'm content. Boring, but happy. I hope the same for you.
Thanks Meli.
Cathy, the wedding is unlikely to be Gibraltar, but you WILL get an invite, introduce me to the bride if you have time.
Karyn, it seems so long ago when I was young and so were you and my restless, feckless, selfish, self first met you and hurt you. You seemed so young to me and now two decades past, I am the old young fool and the you are the giver of lessons. Thank you for still knowing me and for keeping the little place in your heart for me to rest when I am weak.
I've been thinking of younger and more carefree times too, though not dreaming of them. Working 6-7 days a week, and on the rare days off working for myself, with the housecleaning and laundry and bill paying and errand-running I don't have time for with all the work. I was going to try to be all positive and inspirational and all, but the best I can manage is...hey, me too, but it's not like this forever, right? Hope it's better soon.
It?s nice to find people (for a change) whose honest advice comes from the sunny spot of their personal achievements and not from a subconscious reference to their own misery. Thumbs up Girls!!!
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