parallelograms

Funny how our lives run in parallel isn’t it? Not just that we each do the same kinds of cyclic seasonal and diurnal things in parallel to each other (birthdays, lunch, going to the toilet, getting the flu, getting better), but the bigger struggles/ journeys/ realisations that we each have, no doubt someone out there is having them too. Got a parcel a few weeks ago from a friend overseas, someone I used to work with. He is working in London, doing the same kind of thing he did here, that we both did here. He is smart as a whip, organised, tidy, but inward – he is quiet and reserves comment at work, serious, stern even. He is detail focused and strategic. All that. And. And he yearns for something else, something less deadline bound, desk bound, something that comes from colour and expression. Something where he can be spontaneous, silly, expressive. He wants to be a graphic designer, or do community art projects, or similar. And he does that stuff – he’s designed a bunch of brochures, ads, covers for reports (and done a cracking job) at work alongside of doing his actual work his work (and as a volunteer for a not for profit he volunteers at). Just recently he’s got his first paid design gig, for a shop, he was recommended by a friend. In his letter he talks about how the feedback has been a confidence booster and how he realises that feeling comfortable with it is the only way he’s going to be able to transition career.

It resonates for me as I the past few weeks lash out and be daring and think ‘f*k it maybe I can just do some stuff for fun, and make it a big part of my life, even if it doesn’t pay or pay well or pay well straight away, even if it’s a bit ‘indulgent’, or it rings my ‘selfish’ internal alarm bells’. And I know the main way I can do this is to demystify it. Reach out to the unknown, the far away, and bring it close enough to sniff. Make it known. Sleep with it under my pillow so that it smells familiar and not far away and strange and potentially full of risk. So to speak. So I’ve been meeting with people (who I’ve never met before), talking to them about their experiences, asking for suggestions. Which is funny considering how often I’ve suggested that strategy to others seeking career shifts, but never done myself (because I wasn’t ready, I guess). It brings these options closer and makes them more tangible, less spooky and imbued with otherness.

So he and I both grapple with this in parallel. Making something different feel possible. And before anyone springs to the comments button with a vaguely condescending but steadfastly encouraging comment about ‘of course it’s possible, you can do anything’, let me say, yes yes, I know. But the thing, the really important thing here is there is knowing and then there is feeling. I can know, but have the strongest internal emotional aversion to something. We are more than our rationality, more than our moonlight sliver thin story of rationality. Underlying this are our stories, our fears, our aversions, our survival stories. And they run deep, like roots, running sideways in the dark dirt, we barely remember they’re there until we come across one up close, exposed, with earthy must still dusted along its reedy length. And then we are surprised, and stare in wonder at how far they must reach, beneath this soil that we stand on.

Stranger hobbies

The bookseller said ‘oops, I stole your five cents’. He reopens the drawer and gets me my change.
I laughed. 'Well that will make you rich', after a pause conceded: 'Well, actually I guess maybe they add up.'
He says ‘ I collect five cents’
I say ‘like a hobby?’
He says ‘ no, in a jar. At the end of the year I have maybe $40 worth, and I don’t know what to do with them'.
He is uncommonly tall, this man, and I have never spoken to him beyond the barest rudimentaries associated with the transaction of book buying. He is so much taller I think of him as living up there on a slightly different slice of life to me. Not tree top versus ground dweller exactly but nonetheless some different piece of sky our faces brush through daily.
‘It’s the kind of thing an old man would do’ he tells me somewhat ruefully, self chastising, but baffled at it to, like this jar and his five cent collecting sits beyond his own comprehension. His face, behind glasses, towering above me with his extra height, lights up, opens when he tells me this. I realise it’s the only exchange we’ve had like this, we are carving our new ground. He seems genuinely baffled at his own proclivities. We laugh together at his unknowable, unchartable, jar of the deep mysteries of ourselves and our own behaviours.

morning calm

Last day in Korea and I am somewhat sad to go. I have met some lovely people – academics who are soft and gentle but wry and bright eyed with a hunger for learning and a great openness to new ways of doing things – qualities so rare in anyone anywhere. I get invited to dinner at someone’s home and am in awe, I think of how rarely I would ever consider doing that for an international guest to our office. Probably never. Out to dinner somewhere neutral, somewhere where my own lfe is not opened up to them, where I can walk away and have someone else do the dishes and I can go back to my comfortable non-work nest – sure. But to my own home? Probably only if they had been around for several months and I felt like we were friends, then I would. But I can’t think of anytime I’ve been so welcoming to invite someone I’ve known for only a few days and who is about to leave into my home. It makes me wonder at this division between work-life and home-life and how we keep that wall up and why. It shames and inspires me into being more open hearted to visitors in future.

Three is something sweet about the culture here that I can’t quite put my finger on. Locals have talked to me about how it is competitive, how everyone tries to get ahead and do better than everyone else. They also talk about corruption and the very real struggle for job security. But from my comfortable salaried, outsider vantage point all I see is children being adored and being safe, young men who almost universally embody elements of well-groomed and gentle and don’t come across as aggressive or dangerous, the edges between masculine and feminine seem less ferociously guarded, women’s bodies are not uniformly used as commodity in advertising (but not due to any particular rigid religious prudity about bodies), and a softness in the faces of young people, without glazed disaffectedness or hostility.

Adults who wear bunny socks without irony because they’re cute and warm. Road blocks that have cheery faces on them. A transit system where instead of guards that vibe power and the threat of violence in their dark blue uniforms there are signs with pictures of guards as smiling uniformed cartoon squirrels who look joyous that you want to catch the subway and are keen to help. A downtown area where slick new bicycles are left on their stands and not locked up because no-one will steal them. I kid you not. Is that not amazing?