Oh, I'm fiiine

It's been a week of changes for me. Or I should say a week of little aftershocks proceeding one big change. But as Toby Keith might sing, "It's all right, It's all good..." and I really think it is. No one could have rationally denied that it was coming, should have come, sooner. And with my philosophical background, steeped, as it is, in The Little Prince, I have to say I've been able to take this for what it is--as natural an event as the turn of the seasons.

I suppose the only difference is that while he's been able to surround himself with friends, I'm mostly alone in this city. This has its own advantages and disadvantages. For most of last week, I was working very hard on a little project for all of you out there. It occasioned me staying at work until eight or nine pm, long after the cleaners had gone home and shut the lights out on me. Pouring over schematics and text, oblivious to everything beyond a two feet radius, an iced latte burning a hole in my duodenum, unaware of time. That's the life, isn't it? Really? And such a plateau can only be achieved alone.

I also got up to some of my old tricks last week. Down by the river at eleven pm, wandering quickly through the shadows and the leaves, bored to death, yawning, sweating and constantly swatting mosquitoes, it again dawned on me what a waste of time something like this is. If only I still smoked! Or had least brought some beer. At one time this sort of band-aid sufficed, but in times of minor crises the body is compelled to return to lost causes. The landscape of that part of the river has changed. The limestone cliffs have begun to fail, and giant stones--two to three tons they must be--have tumbled down to the river, knocking elms down with them. At one point I climbed up the twisting steps of a tumbled succession of stones to find, at the top, a naked man, sinewy in hiking boots, maybe forty, jerking off and doing poppers. He had hair exactly like this. He looked at me all come hither and all I could say is "aren't you getting eaten alive?" The mystique, unfortunately, has been exhausted.

On Friday night I had beers with a woman who shares with me my mysterious bonds to London. Neither of us can talk about the city and how we feel about it to other people because they don't understand. So we get together and whisper about how magical it is to us, and neither feels awkward telling the other about the overwhelming joy of a bus stuck in traffic or the complete and utter feeling of aloneness that accompanies a stroll through Covent Garden on a Friday night. Glorious things.

What it comes down to is exerting one's own singularity. When I would walk alone and broke through ritzy Covent Garden on a Friday night, and brush past couples have shitloads of fun, the feeling that arose in me, so potent I felt it like a rash on my skin, was one of utter alone-ness, a keen awareness of "the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea" between me and everyone else. I wasn't lonely, I was alone, utterly. You fall in love with yourself at those moments--you can't help it, if only out of necessity.

[ummmm okay so I just read this post again and realized how sappy it sounds. Seriously, I'm not in as sappy a mood as this post would suggest. Please disregard]