bubbles_66

Will its been sometimes since my last entry as someone once said “before you site to write you must stand to live” and I’ve been doing a lot of “standing up” lately

The last months has seen the departure of a couple of close friends back to England , I will be honest and say I was dreading this. We tend to cling to each other here in Prague, basic ex-pat mentality. This can have the effect of amplifying thoughts and feelings. You rely on each other much more especially those of us who partners are in the UK.

It was not the thought of being more on my own, I’ve been along lots of times (many moons ago thanks to Keavy), it was more missing the intellectual and emotional stimulation. Two friends in particular I would like to mention are Ann and Margaret manly because I got something from there friendship that I think is worth sharing with you lot.

As you get older you can feel stuck in your ways, “you can’t teach and old dogs new tricks” mentality. Will these two have both taught me new tricks, and no I am don’t mean what you dirty little minds are thinking, let me explain.

The first trick was to remain enthusiastic !. I love my work (apart from the soul destroying politics) , but I was starting to get tired of it. Four years ago I started working with Ann (not her real name that’s Mary - joke), one of the things I had to do was help train Ann, something I have done lots of time (other people not Ann –duh), but this time it was a bit different. I have trained people who asked lots of questions, as they should but Ann was special.

She would (and still does) ask question from a burning desire to really understand, to get to the bottom of what makes something tick, people included. More that once I have walked away from a conversation with Ann smiling to myself thinking “good question” and feeling intellectually challenged by her ideas which would spur me on to do further study myself.

In a large part my renewed enthusiasm is due to working with Ann. I am really going to miss the day to day conversation we had in and out of work.

Another trick I learnt was from Margaret, and that was “grace” is not just a physical attribute it’s a life one as well. You look at Margaret and it obvious she has grace, this is in part due to her physical stature (she’s very tall, and tall people ether look graceful or like a continually falling tree) it also due to how she was brought up.

But getting to know Margaret I learnt she has something else too, inner grace, I don’t mean she has reach “Nirvana” more she has found a way of navigating through life without bumping in to things, metaphorically speaking (she still walks into doors blind drunk).

I have a habit of hitting things head on, I can make things much more complicated than they have to be, basically I “bump” into life.

In talking to Margaret I found I don’t always have to stand in front of the speed train “horns down” but I can gracefully step aside (obviously another metaphor, standing in front of a speeding train is something you only do once, horns or no horns).

In Ann and Margaret I and Keavy have found two very special people (OK I know we are ALL special, but to be honest some “special” people are just plain dull, sorry). I look forward to watching them grow old and conversations to come.

To my old friends, how I feel about Ann and Margaret is how I feel about you guys just never had the place to say it.

Looking and my close friends old and new they all have one thing in common apart from the obvious knowing me, they all care, and all would go out of there way to help. I am very lucky. :)

Keavy arrived in Prague Sunday, I love see her smiling face when we have been apart for a time. I think she is starting show signs of being pregnant, its only 13 weeks so it might be my imagination.

I know she’s pregnant and I am sure she know (I think!!), and ALL our friends and acquaintances know, but we can wait to its visible to everyone. I want people in low flying planes to look out there windows and say “is that women pregnant ?” I guess Keavy would have to be very very big for that to happen.

I have Keavy in Prague with me for the next 2 weeks so we are going to make the most of it, with luck we should not have to leave the bed room until next Tuesday, ohh errr.

Monday was a very special day for me and my wife Keavy (Irish for gentleness, beauty, grace ). She is pregnant with our child and Monday saw us attend the 12 week ultra sound scan.

There are a lot of mixed emotions around an event like this, excitement at seeing the life you have both created and fear that life might not be there at all.

Like most things in life it’s the waiting that gets to you, once the sonographer started the ultra sound scan we both begin to relax. Seeing the heart of our unborn child beating feels you with a over whelming connection with life and all things good in it. We had created life, a human being, another conscious in the universe.

But when was it life ? when sperm meet egg, first cell division or when the fetus nervous system developed, when ?

I don’t believe we haves souls in the biblical sense, but I do believe we are more than the sum of our parts and cognitive process. So will it be when the fetus is capable of cognitive thought ?

For me and I think Keavy there was no rational point were we could say this bundle of cells in side her was a human being. During the scan they carried out a test for Down syndrome, if it had been positive would we have elected to terminate the pregnancy ? no probably not. But why, this is just a fetus, it is not sentient, self aware ? all true but to us, its parents it is life.

Like many couples we have given the unborn child a name, we chose Avatar meaning essences or spirit. Avatar may not be a fully sentient human being but he/she is the essence of one, Avatar feels the universe, and the universe feels Avatar.

Poll #507034
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 1

What name would you give to your soul ?

Free of my soul and anything else that I felt could hold me back I felt I could really take on corporate life, become a real player. I was comfortable on the poll, I knew the rules, my face was known, I had arrived. But then something happened, something unexpected, I started to feel how should I put it, fake.

I would set in meetings and hear talk of strategy and tactical advantage and I would find myself smiling, smiling at how seriously we all took ourselves as if we were saving the world instead of actual sucking the life out of it.

But how could this be ? surely soulless as I was this could not happen but it was. Suddenly I felt stupid, like a school boy caught peeking in the girls changing rooms, I had had my fun but now I was embarrassed.

And that’s when it dawned on me what had happened, some how when I least expected it my soul had found me again. It must have escaped from its jar and tracked me down, like a 500lb bomb it dropped on me from a great height it exploded with the words I AM BACK.

My soul was angry, it could not excuse me for what I had become and it had remembered all to clearly what I hoped to be. Suddenly I found myself thinking of all those ideals I once had, try to make difference, friends and family before work, the belief that god or no god the universe is an amazing place.

That’s when I knew I had to just let go of this poll I had become so attached too, just lean back, release my grip and fall. Fall back to that place I had started from, the place where I could see the corporate world for what it is.

So this is where I am now, living in the corporate world trying to summon the courage to walk away but its hard, oh so hard. You become used to the life style, travel, perks, the money!!. I know its not going to be easy but I am willing to try if not for my sake, for the sake of my unborn child and the soul mate who has walked beside me for the last 12 years.

In the words of Vigil. “It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.”

So I start to climb..

It was my birthday last week, I turned 39 the last one before the big 40. I don’t know why we say its big, a 1000 is much bigger number but I guess that not a birthday many of us are destined to celibate, unless your Cliff Richard.

At 39 I did not expect to be living Prague anticipating be a dad for the first time. The truth is I was not sure what I would be doing at 39. Its not that I have drifted, I always had a basic idea of what I wanted to do ether an engineer, electronics and such or a solider, firing high velocity rounds at complete strangers. I decided in the end engineering would be safer as it has less chance of complete strangers firing high velocity rounds at back.

So after a couple of false starts and small amount of drifting mostly done around the impromptu camp site at Stonehenge I became an engineer.

As time moved slowly on so did I, screaming and kicking at first. I vowed never to sell my soul, never to bow in front of the altar of big business. I could see the greasy poll for what it was, fake, a false God… slippery.

But humans are curious creatures and after standing at the base of the poll for some time I began to wonder, would it be that bad if a climbed just a little way up ?, how greasy was it ?, could I see my house from the top ? So navigating the pile of broken souls and lost dreams at the base of the poll I begin to climb.

At first the climbing was hard, I felt awkward like a baby rhino on tight rope expecting any second to fall. But then something starts to happen !! your confidence grows, you start to like the view as you get higher, but most importantly you learn how to climb… Tricks like putting you ear to the poll to capture that all important snippet of info you can use to make the guy in front jump, or using the person below you as a rest or the one above as a climbing aid.

It was this point I released souls are like old men, they need love and care, laugher, the touch of an old friend and the occasional medications. Most important you don’t take old men to place were the air is rare and its very rare on the greasy poll.

You don’t notice it at first, souls don’t complain much, they just start to slow down the higher you go. They respond less quickly and it becomes hard for them to react to things they use to love and enjoy.

And when the sound of your soul gasping and coughing becomes to much you decide to place it somewhere out of site, not safe, just out of site. I decided to put mine in small jar, I don’t think I even put any air holes in the top!!

Then one day, one fateful day as you climb the poll desperate to find any advantage you decide to jettison anything you don’t need, and that when you do it .. as you throw off friends, family, dreams, you find that poor gasping old man and let him go and you don’t even look him in the eye when you do it. And down he falls.

So now your free, a lean mean corporate back stabbing machine, you can do anything, no one can stop you, your on your way to the top.

So 39.. never imagined it, who dose.