Closing Time for a Salesman

By the time 11am rolls around the following would have happened; Pre-workout drink with caffeine, glutamine, creatine, sugar. Cup of earl grey tea. 2 pills of vitamin b-12, orange, banana, grapes, another B12 before meeting starts. At this point the body is functioning on fuel. All fuel does to a car Is make it run, and at this juncture the body doesn’t start with an empty fuel chamber, the mind doesn’t react. It's a necessary routine, an arbitrary necessity. 

The sales cycle is like the morning routine. There is a need to jumpstart strong to avoid ambulance chasing at the end of the quarter. You start fully charged, ambitious for the early close, the larger booking, like the dose of amphetamine that makes your scalp itch like lice. When the money doesn’t come you search for blame and digression from fear only to choke on another presentation driving nonsense to the core. But we love it! The chase, the fight, the hunger..like the victory of a first fuck or a long drink at 7pm in your Eames chair.

And when a quota is met or lost you take it like a a shield, and wear it for better or worse. Since the only measure of a man or woman on the pitch is how they do in their last ballet, their most recent quarter, a tumbling dance for the overachiever. Numbers held over our head like a hanging kerosene lamp, but we’re the ones that fill it up. We keep it burning since without its glow there is no rush for the win, for when the wick disintegrates we know our time is done.

Pass me the big one, mate, pass me the jar. Let me fill it up with the pound notes and sterling that will make the people happy. Make the dress shoes sharper and the blazers more fitted, until we’re wearing worn clothes like the blind  beggar of Whitechapel. Stop the car, Im getting out – it’s a monkey factory in here and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Enter the death of a salesman, the poetic conquest gone wrong in a world of sharks and critics. Verbose metabolism violently fades with age, like the vacuous attempt at learning a new trait. Bitter to the core and unable to appease with uniformed non conformity; the younger beast emerges from the shadow to take the lead over the formerly dapper associate. In this little microcosm, I’m on top right now, but who is coming in next?

Ask

Everyone always asks how wonderful it is to live abroad. How exciting it is to move seamlessly through countries and cultures like backpacker on a mission. How many new people you meet, how many languages your translate to knowledge, and all the vociferous food flavours to decipher. They may ask about the two-story loft and the many posted photos painting a canvas for happiness. And while i can revel in that and feel the joy of experience permeating through my veins, I toil with the loss and distance.

I don't often get questions like how is it missing your youngest brothers senior night, probably because high school graduation is a simple milestone here, and its not even called high school. I don't get asked about missing the smells of my grandfathers house which somehow still has the remnants of my late grandmothers pasta sauce lifting up like backdraft against the walls. I don't get asked about the 72 track meets I've missed my siblings run, or the updates on my fathers blood pressure regularly. I don't get asked how it feels to know last when a loved one in family has 4months left to live with the best cancer treatment available.

Its not likely Ill get asked what the weather is like in fahrenheit or how many dollars it costs a month for my "cell bill." Its all centigrade and mobile, British slang and rhetoric. It's probably why no one asks what my mom does when the lake freezes over and the boats are put away and how she still cares for our dog like he was a puppy, he isn't. I don't get asked how the treatment on my grams health or when she'll play tennis again. Miles are replaced with km, inches with cm, 12hr clocks with military time, and piece of shit "all-in-one" washer dryers replace the old fashioned efficiently operating separated stack. Integrated appliances are complicated to repair and operate landlord say, well so is integrating into another culture.

Life inevitably keeps moving forward. Life is a force just like Newton predicted in 1666; in motion until we decide to slow it down, and sometimes its out of our hands. The mass of our livelihood, need for financial stability, friends and everyday changes keeps the acceleration high, and force us to adapt without thinking of the consequences.

Sometimes we need the people close to us to help us to depress the motion, or elegantly soften the burden of all the external pressures. Its no surprise that the further you are from home the fewer strong ties you have and the ropes that bind those relationship resemble shoe strings as opposed to tug of war chains. It's not about the ability to change the decisions that have been made and the distance from all that I love, but more the recognition that the feeling of missing is omnipresent. 

I don't know when I'll move back home, and lately its hard to determine where home is; London, US, row 8 on Ryan Air, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, or Zurich. I've found unprecedented love here and undesired longing for home packaged together in a mixed emotional bouquet. I used to be so sure. But, I live for another day and as the equation of life continues to compute I know that the people I love, and whom love me, live. 

(in dedication to Wendy Loness, Day 1 of Chemo treatment)

Verona - City of Balconies

Its not like entering a modern city in the US or flying over the horizon approaching a concrete jungle stacked with glass. Its almost awkward as you drive through monotonous freeways that look only mildly different from the East Coast US passageways. And, at the end of weaving behind trucks at 140km an hour you come to another gem in the middle of northern Italy. Enter Verona:

 “You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” - Italo Calvino 

Pebble stone walking tone of a 

distant traveler 

underdressed to impress the 

destination of thieves stealing

kisses from Juliette

In a city of balconies 

shouting down for rescue

Marco polo, marco polo

is this not the your location?

Where the river wraps the 

pointed trees

shooting arrows to the sky

of endless blue

Omnipotent is he who 

can address such beauty 

in its temperate state

Void of temperance 

when the dry grapes of amarone

grab their name 

from the bitter grasp of its critics tongue 

Contrast

There is an unwavering violence to sadness. The increased heart rates speeds up the flow of blood in the pipes and pump harder to catch your breath as pressure builds in your sinuses and behind your eyes. Forcefully, water flows through an orifice not built to handle the volume coming through it. The body convulses and hands tingle, fighting for a limp cloth that cant sustain the blunt trauma of your dampened face driving through it. Like a true antagonist the suffering creeps in and utters words of woe into your ear, spiking up past hurt as if to start a vagrant conversation with the current issue.

At this definitive state there is no drug, no booze, nor medicinal therapy that can drag you out of the position.  With your knees held between your thin arms – as if to allow yourself to get closer to your insides that boil at 244, before the flame burns out and you sit luke warm, drained, and incoherently sad.

Why was the human body designed to respond this way? Im sure it’s a fight or flight piece of bullshit that makes complete sense, but that makes it all more the violent. Even to all the sociopaths in the room, this happens from time to time, I know, I am one.

There is an insatiable reaction that occurs when the perfect tune flips on a mobile device thrusting through your ear drums in beautifully compact buds. Everything connects, the wind off the ocean in a foreign country elevates the sound of artists momentarily delivering its beauty to you and only you. Taking the winding staircase down our ear canals and back up to your brain to give it an amazing orgasm, twice, and still have time for the rest of the body. The water amassing 70% of our bodies is effervescent and cool making out bodies fizz to the our momentary Jesus; whomever the artist(s) may be. Whilst completely being a slave to the music that embodies you there is nothing more freeing as you take light steps forward and let the music project onto others through your pores.

Again, at this state there is no drug, no booze, no fucking pric behind a desk that can fight this feeling and its electric as hendrix’s guitar.

Perhaps this is why there are so many dead musicians who have succumbed to the needle, the drink, the pills or the introvert hideaways. For maybe they delivered the beautiful sound that drove them to walk lighter, and fear nothing and when the music stopped and the heart grew weary, it made a vacancy for the sadness to creep in.

Thoughts on Flight Take 2

Another trip to Montpellier, 2 hour flights have become as commonplace as masterbation and I’m tired. My carry-on BRICS suitcase’s has failed to make it one year without the handle mechanism malfunctioning. There a few unknown stains that could be anything, and I cringe at the thought of security rubbing the contaminate swab over the top of it. Im sure there is nothing too explosive, i mean if its gone up my nose I doubt it can blow up an aircraft…you never know. 

Im staring down the barrel of this weak pessimistically optimistic. Excited to learn and develop new products to foster revenue, pessimistically unsure that any of the tech team enjoys my presence. In my 1st year here i have made about 20 people dislike me that I know of, and could give less of a fuck about what toilet paper is in the woman stalls. Ive realised that most of the time I’m an optimistic pessimist. Im excited to go on a date, but concerned about how her pussy may feel in bed or my the portentous gesture of whiskey dick. Im optimistic about my career but blindingly aware of its finite nature and  could end up handing out CV’s like Tmeout magazine on Tuesday morning. 

I’d like to blame 30 years as the main culprit; an amorphous one-third life crises  with a mind binge on ego driven compliments…but I have been feeling this way for a while. 30 just brings a couple antiquated high fives and glances to see how many grey hairs are sprouting on my thankfully thick bed of hair. I don’t pretend that my anxiety is genetic. No one in my family really behaves as I do. Its just a series of habits that have formed over the years causing me to be 60% neurotic, 20% smart, 10% crazy, and a smattering of other things. Im good at what I do but could be better. Im good at drinking but could drink less. Im bad at football so I don’t play. Its all all choice.

So as the land comes into focus in the 6x12 frame window if this budget airline flight - Im optimistically cautious about the next few days and those that follow. In one light i feel the most alive that I have felt in 5 years. But, on the contrary theres a craving for a benzedrine, xanax, bottle of wine and a room corner. Theres an urge to buy a guitar and get back to the music. Theres an lingering infatuation with the written word and the longing to be more like Mailer, more stoic and poised like Turgenev. So the fingers tap away and the google searches commence for an overpriced 6-string that Ill play worse than an 8 year old Justin Bieber. Thats okay though. Im optimistically excited to be free, play music, write, fuck drink, smoke and breath. However I’m pessimistically bound to the fear of solemnity and its transformation on my character and grip against sound sleep. 

Citrizene

How many seconds does it take to know someone, how many to fall in love? My guess is just as many as it takes to break a heart - one. Like the flick of a light switch , a bat connecting with a ball,  a finite moment. (break in thought) enter through curtain into bar (late 1950s)

The lighting is dim, the atmosphere is “showy.” You can tell the owner is a pretentious gentleman who sits high above his adoring guests and accepts compliments like flowers on Valentines Day. There is a comfort in the scent of sin surrounding an often “stuffy” community. The half-naked dancers come as a surprise, burlesque is sort of outdated, but found in some trendy northeast locations. Inhibitions were falling to the floor like the dim light from the classic chandeliers. The place was sexy, pompous, entertaining, and above all, new.

The entry way, as I was escorted through by Jacob and his tall obnoxious friend who had skipped telling me his name, was a velvet curtain. I believe his name was Alex. You had to whisk your way in and move the heavy garment. The curtain was behind an empty pawn shop that was used for show and décor, giving the appearance that you were in a dead, outdated store, but they gave way to an extravagant lounge.

A thousand figures moved in a jackson pollock like formation, ebbing and flowing to the tunes that moved them

She didn’t seem real to me at first site. It was as if something was created right there and then but I was all knowing of its fallacy, all believe of its impending malice. I knew it was delusions of grandeur, the way the light dances off her skin and acted as an accent point to her pearls draped elegantly around her neck. She was Marilyn Monroe without the smoke, she was beauty with no the filter. She was a Bukowski novel save the booze, hatred, and pain that he carried in his words – leaving only pride, description, and clarity. Like a child taking his first glimpse around the corner at a Christmas tree spilling out gifts, I stared in awe. She was a figment of my imagination, I was certain. Nothing this beautiful could live, nothing like this could last – just a momentary blip, a confirmed oasis in the sand.  

At this instant, the daily dose of cynicism, forced in a pill or heaved up my nose had dissipated, I was no longer dependent or influenced. I had taken the Frostian road less traveled - the guidance of optimism had blown me in the right direction at the forked road. Soon my nerves will take over and I'll take to the bottle, drip they syrup like an elixir to a cold. But she makes me want to feel the air crips and clean, dark and cold and perfect all in the same breeze. And before my heart goes up in flames and i start throwing stones, I need to speak to her. 

A few steps and the crowd takes on its raindrop form, thousands of ants marching to the beat of of testosterone and estrogen bubbled up and releasing. 

Pegged Holes

In my short time here my mind has acted like a 14month old tri-lingual babies mind; taking in everything but not yet finding too much use from what I have grasped. Its a process, a bit slow and arduous, but tiny break throughs come about like oil swirling in a bucket of clear water.

I have learned these admittedly over generlized truths; Italians are the most loving, welcoming and kind. The British will warm up to you as soon as they start having more than two season all year round. The scots talk political and persuade you with their booze, they sing like the boy on the futbol field, forever blowing bubbles. The nordics are thick-skinned, intelligent, and their humour is the closest to american I can find.

The sun is strongest in the morning as the skylight opens up the windows in my cylindrical living room. The light creeps in like a candle lit behinds cracked door and before you know it you find the need for sunglasses. As the day wears on the clouds from thicker dulling out the light but creates no worry during a busy work day.

"Cheers" and "mate" have replaced "thank you" and "man" while merci tips its french hat into the ring from time to time. The black crows left for murder scare the shit out of me as my leg appears to be their next prey. 12 degrees celsius is when the tops come down on the lamborghini's and porche's around a crowded oxford circus. Young musicians take to their six strings collecting three pence from those just happy to catch a sunny walk, joyed by youthful melodies.

I've thought about buying a 10 pack of smokes, but pass it up every time. For now I'll stick to having one too many espressos a day and tinting my teeth that way. Tea will be coming next, but my coffee addiction doesn't love company. Out of all these truisms, the one I find most often is; no matter where you are, where you go, you are you. Because you go to another state, another city, another country, you don't change. Experiences alter the way you see things, taste things, feel them, but you are you to the core.

I still can't help but to feel as a tourist, trying out foreign prepared meals in the food shops and listening intently to isolate an accent that seems different in each and every neighborhood.
From Oscar Wilde; To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. There is no shame in living a simple life, but there is regret in time poorly spent.