Thursday, January 28, 2010

Many years of reflection

This is pretty much an experimental entry after some time. Many of my original ones were as I hadn't started describing my life, past and present, but now I'm coming up to 5 years of doing so on the days nothing special has happened and nothing's inspired me there really isn't much material to call on I haven't covered already. Or is there? Had I been in analysis presumably there would be a very deep well of information, and the longer I went on the deeper I would get.

Having a memory from the age of almost 2, I have more to draw on than most, and don't remember ever thinking or feeling any different then than I do now. Same ups and downs, same reactions etc, and many of the same interests. No way can that be environment- how much environment have you had to mould you in two years? As I've been analysing myself as long as I remember if there's much I haven't found I'm fascinated to know what it is. And even if I discover more I can't see much changing. I can be aware of it but only as an observer. And if there's anything new round the corner that will change after all this time I'll be amazed to see it.
The memory also tells me the environment I want. For most this is an previously unexperienced idealised life, maybe abroad, maybe with great riches. For me I want the life I had until my teens, in the same place and similar people. That was my role model and everything I've lost of it since tells me that's what I would rather have. A totally ordinary suburban family life with the benefit of fame if that can be added as well.

Most people have done that, maybe not as wealthy as their parents yet (except the lawyers who can buy their parents' house and pay their bills nowadays), I always feared being kicked out somehow, and worse than that I stayed and my mother left. Then I was kicked out 12 years later. I sensed unless I was married I'd gain nothing from moving out, and got that right. I had the money as I worked after leaving college in what was a very cheap property market so bought a place by 28. That was no fun at all and couldn't get a tenant either so spent most of the time at my father's anyway. The investment was all I wanted and in no hurry to actually live there unless some woman turned up to share it. The woman situation was a simple Venn diagram. The intersection between the women I wanted and the women who wanted me was almost nothing, and the few in it were all sabotaged somehow so didn't last. The dropouts and bores I attracted were worse than nothing so remain alone despite dropping my standards 50% by 40 as planned. Women raised theirs at 40 for some reason so made no difference overall. Creativity does come from suffering as it's a way of relieving it, but unless it's used within your lifetime it only helps other people and not the creator.

I have no clues, plans or answers. The best I do is visit the area I left as often as possible (as I did today), keep connected with it and hope one day if nothing else I can afford to buy a place there myself. This house is fine but not in the area where I belong. If I can think of anything original to help I'll be truly amazed, as besides the slight benefits of meditation life is as it is. I did always have dreams of entertaining people, and will continue this plan as long as I live. That leads to a social life and should fix both at once. One reason I watch all I can from the 60s and 70s is to bring back some of that period to the present, as whatever we had then is all but lost now. You can't lose the recorded TV from then at least, what they kept of it anyway. Every now and then I have dreams of the ideal life, a combination of then and how it could be now, as if I was the head of a large happy family back in the 70s. I certainly knew plenty. Where I lived if you bring the wealth to the current figures most families we knew would be millionaires (we wouldn't mind you, we just mixed with them). They were a mixture of the Hampstead intelligentsia, Jewish professionals and a few wealthy business families who started with nothing.

Most had large families, at least more than the one of me, and the best times were spent around Hampstead Heath, in the snow in winter, the coffee bars there and in Golders Green and wandering around the shops and going back to one of their houses for tea. This was also in the hippy era so many of the females were dressed either like that or like Twiggy, and the fathers were no longer the Victorian patriarchs of the 50s who had overlapped the decades, but intellectual comedians who probably had orgies with their wives and friends and walked around the house naked. The money meant their houses had the best decor of the period, some had games rooms for the kids to disappear to, and most ended up at the top schools when old enough to. Christ knows what happened to them all now. They all dropped off the radar sooner or later, I changed schools many times, people moved away, grew up, died, the usual things. I stayed put and did the same I always had while everyone else came and went. I tried a few others long ago but home is best in the end and I am content in the best parts of London thank you. Only a handful of readers would be familiar with the roads and places I mean, but trust me few places in the world have many like them.

As for being realistic who knows? Finance alone dictates where I live, I could have bought my parents' old house at least once had I enough to do so. That alone would give me the roots to improve my life no end. Bring my friends back from America? Only they can do that and so far are set to be there some time ahead. And a comfortable family life even in the same place in the 2010s can't be that similar to the 1960s or 70s. But they are still alive in me, so touch everywhere I go from inside, and when I complain about things the most it's because I remember how they used to be and seen how cheap and nasty has replaced class and quality in every aspect of life. Jonathon Ross sums it up TV wise, he's paid £6 million to be the biggest wanker and talentless waste of space to set an example to every thick twat on the planet who can swear and thinks they're funny. Do we really want shite like that instead of the harmless and sometimes non PC genuine talents of the 60s? Well I certainly don't.

Are my standards totally unrealistic or something I can genuinely aspire to?

2 comments:

diver said...

'For me I want the life I had until my teens, in the same place and similar people.'

Hi David. Interesting subjective post full'o'history.

I myself am rather anti-'The Past' even though I have more happy memories of it than bad ones. Somewhere along the way I seem to have got myself impressed by a need to leave The Past behind, almost religously ... Krishnamurti says it best to me ...

'Without freedom from the past there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, or innocent.'

Anyway, I was struck by your own fond nostalgia for the past. It sounds like you had a pretty good time back there :)

David said...

I did, there was some hell mixed in of course but when you've got problems in a good setting they don't sink in so far. And I do only appreciate it since I've left the old house, so a second chance to return but not take it for granted would be just right. You can be in the same place and see 100 years go by if you survive long enough.