This State of Independence

Five to nine in the morning. I sit in a cafe looking out of the window at the rain. A slow drizzle floats endlessly down, warm and quiet. Outside it smelt of green things and growth, inside it is coffee mixed with deodorant from the business people surrounding me. The quiet clink and hiss from the counter mixes with the surrounding conversation. They talk in upbeat words like return on investment, niche markets and publicly perceived image. I have no public image today, it is my day off, I just sit quietly and write.

For a long time now I have thought that I do not have a work ethic, that somehow I was born without that compulsory requirement to modern society. But sitting here it occurs to me that I do, it is just not the same one that I am surrounded by.

Money. As deals are made and game plans play out, the underlying theme here is money. Making money and then making more money. All of it to buy things. I don’t want things, I am as happy here with a seven dollar coffee and scone as I would be looking at a shiny new Porsche outside my house. Time is what is important to me. I work to make time to do things, not to buy things.

My whole life has been an attempt to work as little as possible to make myself as much time as possible. I might just use that time to sit and look at the rain, but to me that is what is important no matter how much of a waste it would seem to those around me if they only knew my thoughts. They might say they are working now to make money so that they will have time in the future. But who knows what the future will bring, I would rather have my time now especially as I do not believe that after a lifetime devoted to making money you can suddenly stop, retiring as it is usually called and is the death of a lot of people. No I enjoy what I have now, little as it may be it is much much more than I should think those around me have. Far from being one of life’s losers I have just realised that I am very lucky to be this way.

No wonder people think I live on a different planet . . . I do.

Life is never dull when you make time for a cup of coffee . . .

Solitude and Loneliness

I drove home yesterday saying these two words to myself, thinking about them. They mean nothing if you say them quickly, you have to draw the words out as you speak stretching the vowels out like an endless Sunday afternoon.

At first they seemed to mean the same thing - being alone, and they do, physically but the difference is emotional. In solitude are happy to be alone, if you are not, then loneliness creeps in. Having lived on my own for 35 years I have been both. It didn’t matter where I was - I have been lonely amongst friends at a crowded dinner table, the conversation whirling around me like a hurricane with me at it’s still centre insulated from from it all. I have also found a peaceful sense of solitude in the centre of a city, just sitting watching the crowds mill around me. The same in the countryside, where I lived. On a quiet evening I would often take a bottle or two of beer and drive out to a spot at the edge of the hills at dusk. From there I could look out over the Lothian countryside and beyond to the Firth of Forth. As the darkness crept in and the lights came on I would sit, sometimes in solitude, sometimes in loneliness but always at peace with the world around me.

Those days are long gone now. The world turns ever changing and I change with it. The difference at least for me, from those days is of course an emotional one - love. Since I fell in love and we got married the loneliness has gone. I can be anywhere in the world, in a crowded airport, or on an isolated empty beach and there will always be someone else with me, there is a connection between us that is independent of physical space. It breaks occasionally when we fall out with each other and then that aching emptiness that is loneliness for me seeps back but that is rare and part of being in love, reminding me that love is something you do as well as what you feel.

Solitude. Loneliness. Peaceful, beautiful words that connect with what is deep within me.

Friends Reunited

Well, it may have taken almost a year but I am ready to listen to Tom Waits again.

But how could I have doubted I wouldn’t be - he is an artist I have never seen live but have listened to regularly for nigh on 30 years. There is no way I could live the rest rest of my life without that driving rhythm, the words that fit together like a beautiful puzzle, the occasional hint of spaghetti western, the sense of humour that echoes my own, and of course that feeling of melancholy and hopelessness that is the flipside of western living.

The way he wrings whatever sound he needs from the instruments to get the desired effect has influenced my writing style for a long, long time now - we may have never met but together we have both aged and grown wise . . .

Sorry Nicola, I'll try to keep the volume low . . .

(ps - Life is never dull when you are married to the dancing queen . . .)