Lose Yourself, In a Dream ///that never was////

I thought  I knew      everything  about  everything; 

      but now     I know    I know  nothing   about   nothing

You would think it would get easier, moving on- starting anew, but it doesn't. It never gets easier. This last week has been long and hard and wholly exhausting, but now here at the end of it, sitting alone in an empty corner of an empty house, now, I can think (or at least try to)...

....see....before we can even begin to understand, we must first reflect, we must first try to accept, reality for what it is....

I started a new job on Monday, a job in the environment sector. I got there in the end. I got where I wanted to be. Life... it gets me every time. Life... life is wholly a paradox. As soon as you stop caring about people, they start caring about you, as soon as you're about to give up on a dream, it comes crashing down from the sky and lies gleaming at your feet, as soon as you stop wanting something, that's when you get it. Freedom, perhaps it lies then in letting go of all hopes and expectations... perhaps it lies in simply letting go...

Just a few weeks ago I was in Maroc, thinking about what I should do with my life. I was thinking and thinking and thinking...  should I go to Ankara and live with one of my best mates, should I go to Australia and stay with my brother who's been asking me to come over for years, should I go back to Lahore or should I just stay there in Maroc... I could rent a place, maybe learn Arabic, hang out with the locals... walk everyday...

I didn't know, I really didn't have a clue... but not having a clue, its not such a bad thing. In life I've never really had a clue, I've always just gone wherever I've gone... done whatever I've done... uncertainty has been a way of life for me for as long as I remember, uncertainty; although it can be scary at the best of times, it can also be a beautiful thing- not knowing. For even when we do think we know, we very often don't, we don't know. 

To a degree, all lives are uncertain, sure some more than others. We plan. God plans. And Gods plans are far weightier and more substantial than ours. This has been apparent to me for years and often I've found in life that when I've submitted to the will of God, that's when I've found myself most weightless and free. When you come to the realisation that you have nothing to lose, that's when life starts to fall into place. And so I got an email while I was in Maroc, I was sitting in the hotel lobby checking my inbox to see if anyone had sent me anything, friends, family--- nothing, no, instead I got an email stating that I'd gotten the job, the only job that I actually liked the look of...

And so this job, it's almost slightly and completely but not at all everything I've ever wanted. As of Monday I started working as a communications and PR officer for an environmental regeneration charity, an incredible charity called Groundwork. Stranger than fiction; I was staying in a hostel in the south downs a few years back, when I met this women in my dorm, Clare. Clare worked for Groundwork, she was a community gardener, she told me all about the projects she was involved in one night. And then, the next morning, we reached a junction and we said our goodbyes. And now here, in a completely different life, in a whole new context- I'm here, working for Groundwork.  

But it's important not to lose yourself. For my job, I travel around London a quite a bit. We have offices in North London, South London, East London and West London. For now, I'm all over the place, which is pretty ideal for someone who has a hard time sitting still. Everyone's pretty nice, especially my team, and there are chickens about. I made friends with the brown one named marmalade. And yeah I'm constantly meeting new people-- next week I have a whole load of meetings all across London, I'm filming in Nunhead Cemetery too, one of my favourite cemeteries. I would be lying if I said I'm not scared--- about life, where I am, my job. I feel like I have so much riding on this. I feel like its my last shot of staying and living in London...and so I have to make it work. I have to do whatever it takes to make it work, and I know, I know it won't be easy. But nothing good and true is ever easy.

I write to understand, to make sense of things. Yet, I can't, because life is and forever will be wholly nonsensical. It's a blur, a never-ending series of moments- of cut and paste images; landscapes and places and people and broken memories and unsaid words. Life is. Life just is. And it's important to not lose sight of what's really important. It's so important to keep up your own projects, to keep going with your own life, to stay connected to yourself and to the One. People come and go, I haven't spoken to my best mate in months, haven't heard my mums voice in forever, and friends... well, lets just say I'm trying to stay visible, but it's hard. And when it comes to places, and not losing yourself in certain places, well that's a whole different story... the point is, the point is you have to do what you can to make your life liveable, life- with all its fluctuations and challenges and disappointments- it's up to you to make it beautiful, not circumstance, not place, not people.   

And so I've still been working on my alternative London book, and well this week, despite starting a new job, I've still managed to stumble across so many hidden, beautiful and trippy things, gold framed computers, a Lithuanian church, a secret garden with chickens, Leake street tunnel- graffiti galore, a homely cafe in the middle of a church. I've met people on the streets; an old man called Tommy, ten thousand years old, brittle bones and look of Fagan. A lady named Joe who works in collections at the Imperial War Museum. I hung by the river at night watching the raging high tides, a murky brown, I tried to be. For a time, to just be. I guess what I'm trying to say is that wherever you are, whatever you're doing in life, you just have to remember who you are, and what you're about. You just have to be real and true. Life moves so fast and for years and years, I've been trying to keep up, to stay afloat, to keep going and sure is been tough, but that's life- you just have to plough through, to keep your eyes open, and to believe in yourself...