MAKING PROGRESS
My Facebook and my blog were begun with
such simple dreams. All I wanted was to
help save the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, while in the city of Nagoya,
through a self-started charity and a book about how the most courageous lives
could be ones lived in almost total anonymity.
My friend E would have been pleased to note that I was keeping to my end
of the bargain. I was still pretty good
at not being Ghandi, and being Grant was even easier. I still didn’t have my salt mine but I had
tried to be more proactive, to make more choices.
I
had tried to do something more useful than complaining. I had found some things to focus on- issues I
cared about- and I was trying to fulfil some latent creative ambitions- I was
writing a book. Nevertheless, I was
confronting one major problem. That
problem, as far as I could see, was quite simple, but the solution much more
hazy. The problem was this: I had way
too many problems.
Let’s
begin with the most obvious stuff. I had
been reclassified as a schizophrenic, was self-diagnosed as an overly heavy
drinker and my wife… well, she thought I was going more than a little
crazy. But I didn’t have time to think
about such trivialities. I worked in a frenzy of misguided activity, as I
furiously put pen to paper, paper to Wordplus, and Wordplus to my new
blog. My writing was coming along better
than expected, with almost 100 pages of variable quality. I had carefully censored my writing, choosing
my excerpts with care so that my writing would appear as polished as possible. And I was starting to rack uo some serious
Facebook credibility, having added 32 friends to my wall in just over a week. Despite my wife’s considerable and
understandable anxieties, fortune still seemed to favour the crazy, and life in
general was looking up. Take Saturday,
March 23rd, for example.
The day began with another
argument. Two days previously, I had
missed a medical appointment to get my prescription refilled. I hadn’t meant to. Heavily medicated, 5:45 turned out to be
precisely the wrong time. It was too
late in the day, leading for me to be caught in a nap, and too early for my
wife to send me a reminder call after her work.
I woke at 5:35 , but was unable to hail down the one taxi driver in Japan I could find. Angry at having caused the appointment's cancellation, my wife wasn't feeling very conversational. With everything in my world, including my wife, weemingly conspiring against me, I met her stony silence with some boiling fury. tempestuoulsy, rampant, perhaps just a tad overexcited...After she walked away, I hurled my old canvas carry bag in her general direction, and chased after her. Two days later, my wife had yet to forgive me.
Our new appointment was scheduled for 10:30 that morning. The morning began testily, with my wife asking me to leave myself free in the afternoon. Unfortunately, I had committed myself to a dinner appearance at a friend's guestaraunt (more on that later) and not told my wife. I know what the reader out there in reader land might be thinking right about now. That guy sure does have some communication problems. He always seems to be committed to two things at once, and he needs to learn to say no to stuff he doesn't want. He sure does need to sort out his dramas. Well, are you thinking that? Or am I just thinking that you are thinking that? Are you there at all, on the other side of another screen as I write? I don't know, honestly I don't. Well, let me just say that I do have problems. One of the defining characteristics of my life has been the degree to which I have tried to live my life in such a way as to make other people "happy". Hence, I'm pretty good at "yes"ing things through, but not very good at all at "no"ing others. Yes, I see you don't no what I mean. (This is called a weird and clumsy attempt at humour, or simply a s entence or to make you think. Some typos are intended. I can do that you know? It is my blog.) Moreover, I tend to worry and procrastinate rather than meeting problems head on. So, Saturday was the day I would have to pay the cost of my duplicity.
But it didn't turn out that way at all. In my book, I may go on to write down some more of the sentences here. They are kind of funny and interesting, I think. What do you think anonymous? As an example, after I got my medicine I met a guy I know whose name was Andy. I know him from previous work, and he seems like one ofthe nicer people I've met. I think he's from Columbia actually. So Iwas really happy to see him, but I'm not the smoothest conversationalist. I'm kind of shy and awkward. I find it hard to look in stranger's eyes. I don't know why. It bothers me. I'm evnvious of some other people I know. Like Andy. He just sees you and smiles. His eyes grow wider, like a kid at Christmaa, just at the chance to say hello. Just to see me. I wish I was like that. But I'm not. So that's okay. Our conversation went a bit like this:
"Hey, Andy. Nice to see you. This is my wife. Andy's wife used to work with me on Friday."
We made a little bit of small talk. Everyone said hello and I asked "What are you doing, man" "I have to do some praying," he said. I thought I misheard him, so I said, "What man?" He explained that he was Catholic. "I have to do my praying. I'm Catholic."
(He probably gets a lot of grief about it, just because he likes a pope. "Hey, Andy? Anything else I need to know, or can I just dismiss all of your life and fold you up and put you into one of my little boxes. Plays guitar? Good. Juggles? Good. Writing a blog? Good. Catholic. Oh, I didn't know you were one of those. Catch you later, man. I have felt my whole life that people do this. They like other people's music, they like other people's dress sense, they like other people's attitudes. And they just put them on like they are dressing themselves in other people's clothes. And they do these things for so long, that they forget what they themselves think. Kind of. Not exactly. But kind of. Me, I always used to say, well, how cares what you're wearing. We're all naked underneath. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth and a mind. And fingers made for talking. I told my vice principle this one day. I have eyes, I can see, I have ears, I can hear, I have a mouth, I can speak. I have amind, and that's last freedom. No-one touches that. Of course this is difficult in practice. I like McDonald's. They tricked me when I was a kid. I choose not to eat there very often. And I like the coffee at Starbucks but I wish they'd pay a little bit of tax. Oh, we have hundreds of stores in the UK, but none of them make any money. We at starbucks anre fucking homeless. Yeah, right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for paying back into the society that raised you. I mean, I have debt. I have to say what my income is, because I have/ had a normal job. I didn't get a freaking scholarship. So I have to pay that back. Don't you?)
A real believer in coincidence I pointed out to Andy and Satoko that my dad used to call me Grant Andrew. Wasn't that something? The conversation seemed warm and well intentioned, albeit a little poorly orchestrated.
See you next time, Grantseraph11... Faceless man in a Facebook world. :)
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