A marvellous beginning and a magical ending.

13/08/07

Today I discovered that I'll be in London for over a year now. It feels like I should chart this journey, and journey it is, hence the creation of this blog. But I should explain first.

I have a great life in Southampton which I enjoy. But that's always been about the people and not the place. Southampton doesn't fit me. It honestly never has. I enjoy my time there, I like the place, but it's not me.

My time is spent seeing friends and using my computer. The gym took up time for a while, but there are gyms everywhere. I have nothing that really ties me to Southampton. To the south coast in fact. Not since my parents moved to Scotland a year ago anyway. Just a job and some friends. The majority of my time is spent on the computer and two months ago I wiped the entire thing. Everything gone in a second. Well, a Microsoft second so really it was about an hour or so. But whatever.

I saw Sam on saturday and she suggested it was fate, or a subconscious desire. I'm happy to accept either. All I know is that it probably needed to be done. Otherwise I'd never really be free of the the machine.

But now I find myself far from home, with not just one but two mobile phones and a laptop. I have no internet connection and I have no one to call. I am free of the modern world.
For five days a week anyway.

*****

I've started to suspect that there is something wrong with me. Some flaw buried deep in my psyche. Not too long ago I was forced to accept that there is no such thing as magic. Obvious I know, but it was still something that I hadn't really accepted before. Even now I catch myself pretending and hoping that it's not true. It's a realisation that both depresses and enlivens me.

Because there are some truths that are buried so deep, and are so obvious to us, that we never really question them. We don't even really think about them. They are such a part of us that an entire section of our self, our inner being, is based upon them. So we can't refute them because to do so would be to refute ourselves.

But sometimes something happens. It may be huge and spectacular - a raging shower of fire and blood - or it might just be a tiny moment of introspection. It could be anywhere in between. But when it does happen it forces us to pull out one of those buried truths and take a long hard look.

If we're lucky that truth is still true. If we're less lucky it's nearly true, it just requires a bit of tweaking. If we're unlucky it's plain wrong, and a piece of our personality breaks free.

There's no such thing as magic. Such a simple lie, and yet so profound to me. So much of who I am was based upon it and I didn't even realise I fundamentally believed that magic existed. All around me if I could only see it.

At first I thought that was it, I just had to accept that and let me mind settle back into a new (hopefully better) place. Unfortunately it appears that it's worse than that. You see that's not the problem. It was a problem certainly, but not the problem.

I'm not the person that I want to be. Not yet anyway. I like the person I am, but it feels transitionary. A stepping stone between here and there. I just need to get there. I want to get there, I just don't know how. Or even where there is. I still don't. And that's the journey. That's what this year is going to be about. Getting there. Or somewhere close to it. Or even just on the way to it would do.

So here I am, cut lose from my life for long chunks of time, but still tied to it. Lost in my own mind and all the many personas I've created there (more on that another time) and yet grounded in reality by the very mundanity of my job. Alone in London and yet surrounded by people - friends, family and the faceless millions. No clear goals and no way to achieve them, but a thousand possibilities if I'm willing to risk it.

The Past is Prologue, let the play begin!