I was sitting in Starbucks today, trying to edit, and stay awake from trying to edit, all the while being a little less social than usual, as not to distract myself from fixing the rest the stupid amount of words I have left to fix up. This is actually a lot harder to do when you are comfortable somewhere. Until the past six months or so, I had always written alone. This is I believe how must people who think, write. As most people who write do indeed think. But it is an odd mixture. It is always inspiring to view human life as it passes by us all every day. We tend to stop seeing it after a while; life, stresses, crushed dreams, radical conservative governments, liars, thieves, con-men and bullshit, and so much kinda takes it away, eventually we are just trying to survive... we are always all just trying to survive. What else can you do? So today I look, or more accurately, listen to what is around me... what is there?
There are a large group of smartly dressed and quite upbeat and positive Romanian churchgoers. They are here every Sunday. They come in a group of about 30, mixed of males and females aged 18-49. The first time I saw them, they had stacked all the chairs in a row, like a Romanian Churchgoer Macdonalds party. I half expected to see the Hamburgler pop out at any moment. They are loud, confident, full of life, and the women dress like members of the Amish. They only seem to mix with each-other, but this is okay. I begin thinking how closer people from less fortunate nations tend to be; then I remember why this all makes sense.
There is now a rough looking English lady in her fourties, wearing a vest showing two arms and shoulders covered in tattoos. It was an impressive sight. I imagined her arms as if they belonged to some kind of swamp monster, and wonder if she even knew what a swamp monster was. She was talking to a friend, but I wasn't really listening; the swamp monster arms said a lot already, and this made me feel calm.
There are a group of good old fashioned chav family; complete with beer bellies, tattoo's, fake tans, and the obligatory old person who hates everything. There are a lot of them, and organization isn't there strong point. I wonder how they would get along with the Romanian Christians, and consider it would be either very well, or very badly. Half of the clan leave, then the other half left, begin to bitch about those who are gone. I smile at the simple nature of human psychology, then remember how this isn't limited to Jeremy Kyle rejects.
I see a young, quite large, Muslim looking girl, half working on a laptop while chewing on a panini. A loud noise beckons from the mouth of one of the chavs, a noise which gives away a whole host of a lack of social intelligence. She looks at me and I look at her for a moment; her eyes look sharp, and I can tell they get it. A second later we are both total strangers again. I begin to think how regular an occurrence this is in our lives, and how for only a brief second or two, two people connect... then ends so fast. 99/9% of them, we never connect with again.
There are more; a teenage boy and girl talking about society and psychology. They have no idea. Ten years from now, they should be fine, I thought, but life's greatest teacher are the arse-kickings and brutality outside those educational corridors. Fifty years of reading about love, has less power in the soul then five minutes of feeling love itself. Words cannot really explain life, just a shadow of what we wish it to be within ourselves.
People come, people go. Some I hear, some I see, some I never even knew were there. I get up. I pack my book into my bag. I talk to Sabi, one of the baristas, for a minute or so about her make-up; she seems happy. This makes me feel better. I say goodbye, I leave. I walk home, surprised that my decision not to wear a jacket was not one I would regret. I wonder if anything I learned today will carry me through. It may take me years to figure something out that did, or never remember anything at all.
But I am not worried about this, for there is always tomorrow...
No comments:
Post a Comment