As I plop down onto my sofa to write this, I can't help but remember the first time I wrote an electronic journal. God it feels like aeons ago. I was probably about 9 or 10 years old, keyboard happy on my LC Macintosh. Now as I watch the blank screen of the computer patiently as it loads, I catch my reflection and ponder as to how much it has changed over these many years. Was I ever innocent?
Life - it's always been about getting ahead for me. On top. I think I inherited that, probably from my mother. And in so doing I developed a whore-dom for her approval. When she died, I prostituted every skill that I had to make sure the approval never died with her. I made sure everyone approved of me in one way or another. It sounds pretty screwed up, but the reality is it has helped me a lot. I worked my ass off, finished first in my graduating class both at school and university. Took diversifying my time to the extreme - writing, web design, saxophone, track and field training, charity, politics and eventually - law.
But I didn't stop there. Like her I've always been a social creature, and nobody approves of a know-it-all do-it-all geek who can't carry a witty conversation or enjoy cointreau. I used what looks I have and combined it with whatever affluence I had acquired and morphed it into charm. The subtle kind of course, the kind that takes equally charming and affluent people to truly understand (the rest are confused, baffled). Even in my criticism I make sure that it is tasteful, hyperbolically understated so as to deepen the injury intended.
I was always like this. I dont remember a time when I didnt craft every word that came out of my mouth, or didn't plan a couple of steps ahead, or obsess over social dynamics. Innocence and spontenaiety? In theory possible. But it's almost as if I can hear my Id, Superego, and Ego - every layer of my brain - talking at once, analysing every moment.
Now I'm 23. Now I'm running. Faster, faster. Not sure where, but in doing the above I have surpassed even my own expectations. Now there's little out there to challenge me to go further. "A god amongst flies" AD tells me, and I allow myself the thought out of egoism.
The world around me has changed since the age of 9. London is the perfect escape. Transience. Let me hear you say it, with a capital T, Transience. After hating growing up in a family where family members disappeared, and in a school where your friends often came from far away places only to return with a piece of your heart with them, no justice was quite so poetic as me moving to this wasteland of London. Here it is multiplied. No one same set of friends exists from weekend to weekend as the never ending flock of 747s swoops in and out of the city. You spend your day between 2 or 3 languages, 10 or 20 nationalities, people you will never see again and people you will bump into weeks later and never remember.
London is the perfect escape. Life in London is a surreal blur, not for the motion sick or the faint of heart. Thick skin and a thicker wallet is all you need. Opulence, the city thrives on it. Spend your weekends on a diet of vintage champagne and pure cut cocaine, spend your week closing the deals and billing the hours. In between you throw in the exhibitions, the pseudo-philanthropic events, the afternoon teas and the late night coupes. Leave the country once a month and pretend like you never want to go back. Its as if we all are afraid of having an hour to ourselves, lest we think inwards and not outwards; lest we realise the gaping abyss we are trying to fill with infinite ambition and indulgence. It's a cliche, but in a city of so many people the easiest thing for one to be is alone.
Was I ever innocent? The question, I guess, is what you would define as innocent. If you define innocence through actions, then that ship has sailed a long, long time ago. If its a state of mind or an tenacity to faith in the goodness around you, even when you live in a place like London, then maybe the curtain hasn't quite been called yet. One thing, however, is for sure. In constantly pushing and getting so far ahead I sometimes fear that I've lost a bit of who I used to be along the way.
