Grey's Journal:
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After returning to London, I settled back into my old habits. This involves spending most of the day wandering between my favorite museums and cafes. Because I go to the same few places regularly, the staff recognize me - not because I'm the loud American who never returns to his native land, but because I order the same thing every time. As I mentioned before, for me, new food is always an uncomfortable experience. So, when I decide on a dish at a particular place, I stick with it. The staff at my regular haunts usually give me a smile of recognition and indicate there is no need for me to place my order; they already know what it is. There is only one regular place that tries to upset my regular routine. The cafe below St Martin-in-the-Field. No matter what time of day or night I go, the same woman is there waiting for me. She is in her late 30s. Mousy but intimidating, for all the force of God is behind her. She works in the cafe, but I assume her to be a devoted member of the church above. She follows me down the long buffet as I pass all the rows of food. When I don't buy the £20 dinner, but just get the £1.10 tea, I feel the same artifical guilt I did when I was a kid in church and passed the collection plate without adding anything. The funds from this cafe support the church, declares a sign by the cash register. Because she follows me, I feel compelled to at least feign interest and examine the food. Eventually, I get to the end of the buffet where I order my tea. I give one last look at the food and then a slight frown as though they didn't quite have what I wanted today. Her mousy eyes look at me and I can hear her thoughts: Who do you think you're fooling? So, I spent the first two weeks reacquainting myself with London and consistently dissapointing religious women. While I was quite content with this, Alex, my imaginary daughter reminded me of the bigger picture. She sat across from me in the cafe beneath the church. ``Oh, hello Alex.'' She was older this time. A young teenager perhaps, with the full know-it-all attitude that age implies. Her hair was dyed a bright red and she had an air of casual cool about her. This is the advantage of imaginary people, the core of them stays the same but they change in ways real people never could. This time she was more a kid sister than a daughter and had an American accent. ``So,'' she said, looking around at the brick arched ceiling of the cafe and at the mousy woman behind the counter, ``this is how you spend your days?'' I shifted uncomfortably. ``I'm quite content.'' She looked me in the eyes. ``You remember December?'' she asked, knowing the answer ahead of time. This is the disadvantage of imaginary people - they cannot be tricked. ``Ummm... yes.'' ``You remember how you started to go crazy because you had nothing to do all day?'' It struck me as odd to have an imaginary person talk about going crazy, but I answered anyway. ``Yes, well... but the days were short and cold then,'' I replied. ``The days are getting warmer and longer now.'' Pause. ``I'll be able to go to the parks again soon.'' She raised an eyebrow. ``So, when you finally get up the courage to ask out a beautiful woman you will be in the same situation you were a year ago but without the legitimate excuse of being a student.'' ``Err...'' ``That's what I thought,'' She brushed her hair out of her eyes. A gesture of triumph. ``You really need to be able to tell people that you do something with your life. You need a plan.'' Of course, she was right. I need a plan. A big... Grown up... Plan. I tried for a while to make a big, grown up plan, but I failed, so this is what I'm going to do for the time being. Step one: generate income. While the most logical response to the problem of doing nothing would be to get a job, I don't want one. They all sound horrible. When I talk to my employed friends the consensus is: grown up jobs suck. The only positive response I heard was: `I like the money.' No 9-to-5 job for me. When my dwindling resources are depleted and I start going hungry, I will be desperate enough to get a real job. But that day is not today. Until then, I plan to reduce my negative cash flow by tutoring physics. I went to the library and checked out The London Schools Guide 2004. I went through the ranked list and wrote down schools in the top 100 that were reasonably close to me to send them a letter offering my services to their students. In the process of finding schools, I confirmed my suspicions about my own borough of London, Islington. It's pretty shitty. All 32 burrows of London were ranked in the book by the quality of their schools. Islington's position? 32nd. Each school had a little description. I lifted some of the more amusing comments and placed them here for you. [The school] is, by Islington standards, a success story. [The school's] weakness is truancy... higher than the national average but low for the borough. And my personal favorite: Any applicant, putting [this school] as first choice will be admitted. Well, sign me up. But after thinking bad thoughts about my borough, I realized something about London. If Islington is as bad as it gets, London is a really, really great place to live. I wouldn't travel anywhere near the worst parts of New York City, but in Islington, at least I feel safe-ish walking down the streets at night. So, a very British hurrah! for London. Even the worst isn't so bad. Step Two: Volunteer Volunteering is something I've wanted to do for quite a while. I have vague, nebulous, Ralph Nader style intentions of making the world a better place. However, my preliminary research into volunteering left me disappointed. I thought that if one offers one's labor for free the world would compete fiercely for it. This is not the case. The places I've looked into seem positively uninterested in enlisting volunteer workers. On most of the charitable organizations' websites the `volunteer' tab seems almost an afterthought and is usually filled with unexciting opportunities like `type numbers into a computer while sitting alone in a dark room'. The only volunteer work I can find not bordering on the kind of work I'd like to avoid in a 9-to-5 scenario is on the other end of the spectrum. For example, living with four homeless people in a housing project for three months. No thank you. I'd like to find something more middle ground. Rewarding and meaningful work that dosen't require me to live without broadband internet access. But no matter what I do with volunteering, I know that my grandmother, were she still alive, would frown at the idea. She was fond of saying ``I'll only volunteer if they pay me''. This was not a witty remark on her part but a legitimate statement. That she never saw the humor in it made it all the funnier. Part three: ... I'm embarrassed about this part. This makes me cringe. I realize I've slowly become like the hippies, theater majors and English majors I hated in college. They were (mostly) the kind of people who spent a lazy day under a tree absorbed with their own greatness while scribbling `deep thoughts' in a notebook and wearing sandals. I'd walk past, an overly self-important physics major, and look down on them. But now, in quiet, dark moments when no one is around, I whisper to myself the same words I heard from the mouths of my sworn enemies: I want to write. It makes me want to yell at myself: `get a job, hippie'. I'm blaming my desire on this journal. I've grown to like writing it. Sure, I put it off until the last possible moment every week leaving my poor editor/father to run across the final draft like a lone battlefield medic trying to pump life back into the horribly mutilated words. But, I like writing the journal. Perhaps, just perhaps, I could sell some of my wandering-go-no where essays as short articles in magazines. I don't know if I can, I know the odds are stacked wildly against me, but I want to give it a try nonetheless. What happened? I used to be so practical. I was going to get a Ph.D. in physics and make a lot of money at a research job while laughing at the English majors and theater majors on the unemployment line. The only thing I can hope is that this is just a phase; I like to think of myself as a more pragmatic person. But, after all, I'm 22. Hopefully, no one will think less of me for being idealistic. There is a saying that if you aren't an idealist in your 20s, you have no heart, but if you aren't a realist by your 40s, you have no head. I started my twenties as a realist, but then slipped into idealism against my will. We will see where I end up. |
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Copyright © 2004 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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