Spring cleaning

Spring is here!

This morning I lay in the sunshine that was streaming through our bedroom window. The warmth of the rays tingled my greyed exterior and I felt that everything was right with the world. I'd also just devoured a bowl of fruit salad and was contemplating how long I should wait to digest the fruit before taking my antibiotic (yep those shoulders are still causing me big problems) and then polish off the avocados with some tuna and toast (although I've recently discovered that I should be half-dead with mercury poisoning given the quantities of tuna I used to inhale in Canberra).

I'm always amazed at how much one's view of the world and attitudes towards it can change based on a good night's sleep, a bit of exercise and some healthy food (and an all important warm shower to finish off with and wash away the remnants of negativity).

Saturday was a different story. I'd struggled home in daylight after another heavy night on the drink, after another tedious body and soul destroying week in a chair staring at a computer screen. The only reason I can drag myself into the office on most days is to check my email and research all the things I'm going to see and do, eventually.

So as I stepped out of the shower on Saturday morning, inspected my shoulders for the first time that day (no bleeding, good. No additional very sore spots, good. More hard red lumps, bad. More scarring, bad. Skin wrinkled and on the verge of falling off because of high power benzol peroxide, will live with it) I was more acutely aware of that nasty feeling that I keep trying to push away and ignore - I'm just going around in circles. Work, eat, gym, sleep, work, eat, gym, get drunk, sleep. And I realise that while I'm in London, those circles are actually a downwards spiral. For the first time in my life I actually feeling like I'm going backwards - forgetting things, losing athletic ability/coordination, having an interest in fewer and fewer things, feeling bitter about the people in this city/country. I ask myself for the thousandth time - why the hell am I forcing myself to stay in such an evil place? And I suppose that is part of why I despise London, it feels evil. Lucas saw a woman in a shop the other day deciding between a £200 and £300 handbag. And she probably wasn't even that wealthy compared to many in London. I can literally feel my stomach turn when I think about instances like that, in fact I can't even start writing about how it makes me feel otherwise I'll launch into an uninformed and ideologically biased tirade. Can I also just mention what I saw on TV the other night as well - you know the show in Aus 'Deal or No Deal'? Well I saw the British version. There was just so much emphasis on what a fantastically determined and proud woman this lady was because she had 'faith' that there was £75,000 in her suitcase. People were cheering and encouraging, there were tears and fist pumping. I was so totally horrified at the link they were making between this woman having 'belief in herself' and the total gamble of choosing which suitcase to open next. It was just a sickening display of greed and acceptance that money as an end is something worth striving for.

Where was I.....

So I try and justify why I should stay in such a hateful city so full of greed, pride, lust and envy. The obvious answer is so I can afford to get out of it and see the places that I've been dreaming of since we landed here just over seven months ago. But there is no way I'm going to be able to finance this next trip anyway, I'll be getting into some serious debt (and further locking myself into a pattern of earn and pay if/when I get back to Australia) whether I leave now or work for another four months. How many times Lucas and I have said - we could just leave.....but then reality kicks in - he has a wedding to attend in Canada in June, we have to wait it out.

So last night in my state of frustation with the pointlessness of pretty much everything I picked up the The Holy Qur'an that we have recently purchased to aid our research for the Central Asia/Middle East legs of the next trip. We had also been to a lecture on Friday night called 'The Future of Islam' with a debate between two renowned Islamic academics and thinkers (as opposed to scholars), an extremely eye opening look at the way Islam views itself and it's future. So the Qu'ran was actually a bit boring so I put it down and kept practicing my Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Uyghur (all Turkic languages and really just dialects of a common language).

So who thought I was about to convert to Islam? While I think spirituality has a big role in making me happier with where I am and what I'm doing - I'm not at the stage where I need to subscribe to a religion just yet.

Watched a cool movie last night, had a good sleep, followed by aforementioned eating and a high intensity gym session. So now I am feeling substantially more at ease with facing the next four months, well for a few days anyway.