I’ve moved everything from here to a new site, www.richeperkin.com
It’s got all the posts I made here, the ones I imported from MySpace, and a couple new ones I’ve done since making the change at the beginning of July.
Besides, Bloggy McBloggerson is a silly name.
At what point do you cut your losses and move on?
I’d love to be able to say straight away. Need to move on? Sure, doing so now, consider it done, next! If only it were that easy. And by the way, I’m talking about everything here. Moving on from a job, a house, a friendship, a lover, whatever has run its course in your life and needs to be left behind.
But it’s not that easy. If it were, I think for the most part the world would get on a bit better than it does. We could let things go that really don’t affect us in the grand scheme of things, worry about what’s important, and not give a shit about what isn’t. We could get over elections that we perceive as having been stolen, and instead of screaming hateful, hurtful things at one another we could get on with being a part of a country, rather than a faction within it.
We could move on from failed relationships, not linger on what we did wrong, or what we think they did wrong, and wait or hunt for the next one. Not just romantically, either. A perceived slight, something that causes a friendship to break apart might just be that: Slight. So slight that the other person doesn’t even realize it. On the flip side if there is a falling out for very real reasons, then so what? A friendship shared is still something that you once had, and don’t let someone turning into a twat spoil the good times you may have shared.
Course, this is something I need to take my own advice on. I need to be better at moving on than I am. But it’s hard to do. It’s hard to forget the bullshit someone said to you, that really brought home that they aren’t someone who has anything to add to your life. It’s hard to forget a failed almost romance, when your heart still lurches as she walks in the room. It’s hard to get over a grudge, held for years, about how someone treated you and your friends. Instead, I’ll linger on it, going over things in my head. How should things have happened instead? Was any of it inevitable?
Maybe it’s all just fuel for stories I have yet to write. Maybe I’m being led somewhere, or driven somewhere, everything piling up until one day I have no choice to move on, for sanity and safety. I like the idea of being driven, let’s go with that.
Fifteen years is a long time when it’s half a lifetime.
I moved to the US fifteen years ago yesterday. 28th June, 1995. I left my Grandfathers home in Salisbury and flew to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where my parents had already lived for a year with my Brother and Sister. By some coincidence, the 28th was the same date they had left England, but they didn’t go straight to Baton Rouge. They went through New York City, where they did a lot of the tourist things people are supposed to do: The statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center.
I joined them about a month after they got the Baton Rouge, for summer holidays. Back to England for Autumn Term, Louisiana for Christmas holidays, England for Winter Term, Louisiana for Easter holidays, England for Spring Term, then the US for good. At the time, for good meant a couple of years, couple more years of school, and then probably back the England for University.
If there’s one thing I’ve realized in the past fifteen years, it’s that your probablies probably won’t turn out the way you expect. The couple of years away from England have turned into half my life. It’s not over yet, but I probably won’t move back to live in England permanently again. When you travel, when you move, it isn’t so very hard to retrace your steps, and go back in geography; the steps you can’t retrace are the steps in time. I’ll never be the boy who was excited, lucky, to be going to the US for a little while. A friend in school, Robin, had lived in California for a little while and we all thought he was the coolest guy ever. I thought I’d end up like him, but in retrospect it was him being him, not him having lived in LA for a while, that made him cool.
England will always be home. It’ll always be where I’m from, regardless of my being born in Germany, or leaving at fifteen. I’m planning a trip home in April. But home has grown to mean, in the time I’ve been away, the whole country. More than that, it means Britain. while I’m there, I’ll see friends in London, In Ireland, as well as Salisbury. I never spent much time in either place (I never went to Ireland until after I’d moved away). If I have time, I’ll go to Scotland for a couple of days, maybe Cornwall. Those places that are now half a lifetime away, and always with me, in my soul.
That’s the cynic in me. In my soul. I’m still not willing to accept anything as in my heart, except blood and maybe the beginnings of arterial plaque. But I carry these places in my soul. The hills around Salisbury that have been inhabited and farmed and fought over and loved for thousands of years. The comfortable, depressing grey of London as it lurks under rain clouds. The sound and smell of the Cornish coast, so similar to every coast in the world, yet special to me. After fifteen years of being an ex-pat, I think they mean more to me than had I stayed in England. After fifteen years I’ve found that while I may not love where I’ve been since, I don’t have to choose between any of them. I don’t have to cut out parts to make room for more. The Cornish coast hasn’t been replaced by the Oregonian, or any of them I came to know from my time at Sea. The drizzle of home hasn’t been replaced by the drizzle of Portland, or the downpours of Louisiana, or the warm showers of Hawai’i. You just expand the place, build an extension, open up the basement and the attic. There isn’t a finite amount of room. You don’t have to knock it down, replace the old with the new, and maybe that’s one of the things I find uncomfortable about living in Vegas. Every couple of years, things have to be reinvented. A gift shop becomes a tattoo parlour/lounge. An old hotel gets blown up and built bigger, shinier. A club gets remodelled and renamed three times in the space of five years.
That’s why people are better than real estate. Infinite capacity, and an ability to grow slowly over the years, without having to start all over again. So when I leave here (and that’s not a probably, but a definitely), I won’t erase all traces of Vegas, or Oregon, or Baton Rouge. I won’t erase any of it, but keep adding, and end up with another half a lifetime of experiences to bullshit about.
I got married last night.
It was a pretty rushed ceremony. And I was surprised by the guest list; there were friends there I haven’t seen in years, people I wouldn’t have expected to show up, and some people noticeably absent. I wasn’t wearing a kilt, like I’ve always said I’ll wear.
I actually helped set up the room for the ceremony. I know that the groom doesn’t usually take a part in that, but I think I was doing it to keep myself busy. It’s been less than 24 hours, but I don’t remember the decor, or the colours my bride picked. We didn’t have anyone in the wedding party.
After the ceremony I walked outside, wondering how I had got myself into this situation, and how I could get out of it. I almost spoke up during the ceremony, but a terrible character trait stopped me. I couldn’t be the guy who leaves the bride at the altar. For some reason that, to me, is worse than getting divorced at a later date. I felt that it would have been more upsetting for her to leave there and then, stop mid-vow, than to end it after the fact. And even though I went through the ceremony barely there, wanting to be anywhere else, I remember the looks on the faces of my friends, and I’m a little disturbed by them.
To a person, they looked eager to see me married. There was a disturbing hunger to the way they watched the proceedings that didn’t make me any happier about what was going on. Even the moment when my bride appeared, and they could see the look of dismay I was unable to hide, it didn’t matter to them. They were there for a wedding, damnit, and it was going to go ahead regardless.
My bride. Someone I’ve known for years, since freshman year of college I think. I’m not sure why her, but there she was, clutching her bouquet, looking completely ambivalent about the prospect of marrying me. I’ve never thought of her in that way, I doubt she’s ever thought of me in that way, yet there we were, binding ourselves to each other forever until I could find a reason to get unmarried.
I think it’s probably a good thing I don’t remember my dreams more often. If they’re all as bizarre and disconcerting as last night’s dream was, I’m going to start being afraid of sleep.
getting back from a trip away is a lot like breaking up. You’re left with a period of depression, of not knowing what to do with yourself. There’s laundry to be done and the house to be straightened up, as if it magically got rearranged while you were away. You feel tired. Your friends all ask how it was, but you don’t really want to talk about it. You find yourself with less money than before it started.
And then you start planning your next one.
I got back Monday morning, and I’m already looking into going away again, but this time somewhere I really want to go; I wanted to go to Oregon the past few trips, but I’d much rather have gone somewhere further afield that I’m not so familiar with. For October, I’m looking into Europe.
Originally I wanted it to be a full three week trip, but as part of the whole I’m-thirty-now-and-need-to-be-a-bit-more-responsible thing, I’m actually acknowledging that I can’t afford that, so it looks like it’ll just be the British Isles. Scotland with the parents and grandfather, London with a couple of friends who live there and I haven’t seen in years, and Ireland with another friend who I haven’t seen in years.
My vacation time is very precious to me, and I don’t get enough, but finally after six years with MGM Mirage, I’m on three weeks vacation, so of course I want to make the most of it. But another part of the sensible thing I’m trying, is that maybe I should start going to writing conventions. I should start networking, meeting people in the industry, and using up my precious vacation time to work on never needing vacation time. Most people I know who are in an industry go to the conventions as and when they can. My problem is that I wouldn’t really go to listen to other people as much as I should. I write what I want, rather than what I think people want. I’d go to them and not really care much about the speakers unless it was someone I was a fan of. I don’t know if I’d get anything out of going to one.
That’s probably exactly why I should go. It’s all very well typing away, and letting a couple people read what I’m beating out of the keyboard, but I should probably throw myself into it more than I already have, and by it I mean the industry. I should buy the books, listen to the podcasts, go to the conventions, sign up for the periodicals. I just want to keep myself happy with the illusion that writing isn’t work, even after I get paid to do it. I want to see it as a treat, as theatre used to be and ceased to be a while ago.
So to use my coveted vacation time to do that? We’ll see how I’m doing once I get book one back. Maybe it’s time to look into it, put myself out there. Because if I do, then I have the potential to be a serial monogamist. I can go from vacation to vacation, writing all the while, and never having to go through the break-up period of malaise and frustration that I’m in right now.
I spent half of May up in Oregon. I was there the first time for my Sister’s kid, my first Nephew. The second time was for a college roommate’s wedding, and a barbecue the day after with eight kids, most of the parents of whom I was in Salzburg, Austria, with. That was May.
It’s now June, and I think I’ve finally realized something. Maybe I’m a little slow that it took me this long, but it was probably necessary. I’ve got let go of the past and move on. And it’s not just me, I think we all have to.
I managed to move on from England. I’m not sure when it was, but at some point I realized I would never live there permanently again. When asked the question “Will you ever go back?” my answer went from “probably some day,” to “I doubt it. Maybe for a little while, but not for good.” I managed to move on and accept that it was a part of my life that was over. Being up in Oregon a couple of times this past month, I’ve come to the same conclusion about Portland (I never had any intention or desire to think about moving back to Eugene). Portland’s a great city. There is so much about it that I like, that I miss, and that I remember fondly. But if I was to move back there, it wouldn’t be the same. Everyone else has already moved on, hence the title of this blog. That’s what they’ve all been up to. I’ve done neither, so maybe that’s why it’s taken me longer to get to this point. If I moved back up there I’d be the only one not in a family situation. I’d be looking for something up there that I wouldn’t find, and I think I’d rather enjoy the memories than keep searching to make more of the same ones, and lose those I’ve already got.
So for now I’m in Vegas. It isn’t really a bad city, despite the fact that the drivers are shit, the road construction incessant, the summers too hot, the roaches too big, and the people too concerned about trifles. I have a decent job here, and that means I don’t get to walk in the rain as much as I’d like. I have my own townhouse, and that means I don’t get to just drive to the beach in an hour and a half. I have good friends down here, that means I don’t get to see the others I have scattered across the planet.
So I’m moving on, and truly looking forward and. . .looking forward. Now I just have to convince the rest of the planet to do the same.
Let’s move on, people. Let’s get over this whole division thing we’re doing right now. When it’s got to the point that people can actually argue that the oil spill in the gulf isn’t a bad thing, something’s fucked up. We need to move on and realize that businesses can’t be trusted to regulate themselves. We need to get over the influence that corporate lobbyists have on the Government. We need to get past this, and actually become the country we pretend to be.
We need to move on, and understand the world doesn’t work the same way it did when the Bible was written. Technology has changed. Whether you believe in the Bible or not, you can’t dispute that fact. And for that matter, the world doesn’t work the same way as when the Constitution was written. The Founding Fathers would probably have been all for the Internet and the sharing of information, but you know why there’s no mention of it being a right in the Bill of Rights but they do talk about the right to bear arms? Because it hadn’t been sodding invented yet.
I don’t have much hope for any of this, to tell the truth. I learned through my trips up to Oregon, but there are too many people blatantly and willfully ignoring the world the way it is and looking back with fondness at the way things were, to get out of the hole we’re putting ourselves in as a planet.
I’m curious why people would want to go back the way things were? Do we really want to return to a time when women or people with a different colour skin were considered property? Let’s go back to a time when adultery was punishable by stoning to death, shall we? Because I’m not sure you’d end up with even a quarter of the population left if that were to happen (look up the Bible’s definitions of adultery. It ain’t just about cheating on a spouse). Or we could take the Second amendment, and use it to mean that you have the right to bear arms that had been invented at that time. That’s what they were referring to in 1791, when the Second Amendment was added, so get rid of your automatic weapons and pick up your blunderbusses. The bright side to that is you don’t need to stockpile ammo for the day Obama stops honest businesses from selling the ammo you need to protect yourself with, cos you can load a blunderbuss with anything small enough to fit in the barrel.
So come on, let’s move on. We’ve made so many advances in technology, let’s advance our viewpoints as well.
I’m hoping that history repeats itself.
When I was in University, I lived in Kenna Hall. We’d have parties there. But one particular party, I went outside for a breath of fresh air, and took a walk along the bluff. (The University I attended, University of Portland, is situated on a bluff overlooking the docks in Portland) I walked out there, in a mildly alcoholic haze, watching the lights below me and just able to hear the sounds of machinery as the kept working late into the night. The activity was almost all focused on a cruise ship in dry dock. I made up my mind there and then that I would work on a cruise ship when I graduated. I went back to the party, and started telling people that I was going to work on ships. I thought about doing it for a summer or two, but going to Salzburg for a year got in the way of doing that, so it would have to wait until after graduation. But for three years, I told people I was going to work on cruise ships.
I joined my first ship in July of 2001, six weeks after graduation, and worked on them for almost 3 years.
While working on ships I learned Automation. That is to say, I got taught the order in which to push buttons on an Automation console, which is what passed for training. The learning happened later, when things broke and I had to pull some sort of show out of my arse using a couple of joysticks and no variable speed, or overnight phone calls to London from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to troubleshoot problems. When contractors were sent out for jobs that were too big to do on the ship, or we went into dry dock ourselves, I tried to pick their brains and learn more about the systems (and generally realized that they were bluffing as much or more than I was). It was my first contract, before I learned Automation, that I learned about Cirque Du Soleil, from an Argentinian guy I worked with, Jeronimo. He talked about the shows they put on and the equipment they got to use, so I decided, like him, that I would work for them some day and started telling people this.
I started at Zumanity 10th June, 2004. (And Jero went on to get a job with them on tour).
So now, I’m going to be a writer. I’ve been telling people that for about two years. I’m not sure when I went from just writing for the hell of it to deciding I want to make a living doing it, but I did, and I do, so I will. I know everyone keeps saying it’s hard to get into it, it’s hard to make a living at it, but I’ve been successful so far when I’ve put myself out there by saying ‘this is what I’m going to do.’ There’s no point in aiming to have just one thing published, make enough for a week long vacation in the Azores and then going back to your regular life. Sod that. I’m going to make a living as a writer.
Now maybe I should start making other statements of intent, if that’s the right phrase. Statements of desire? Statements of . . .of the future? I intend to be a writer, I desire to be a writer, I shall be a writer? Well, whatever statements I’m making, I’m also going to start saying I will get in shape, I will travel more, I will make it to space one day.
There, I’ve said it, so now it’s going to happen. I’m just not going to lie back and wait for any of it, I’m going to work for it. Now.
I sat for an hour with my Nephew, Aiden, napping in my arms this evening. He stirred a couple of times, twitching in his sleep, eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids. It’s my first Nephew, and it’s the most exposure to a baby I’ve had. A few times he raised his head and muzzily looked around before flopping back down, and for being only twelve days old I’m told that’s pretty good process.
So what do babies dream of? If dreams are how we process the events of the days, then it makes sense that babies dream. Everything is new to them, so there’s a lot to process. And being out of the womb and in the real world must be one of the most bizarre changes of scenery imaginable, if they had the experience or vocabulary to talk about it. How are they even able to dream, given that I still don’t have the ability to put in words some of my dreams, and I’ve had thirty years of abusing the English language.
Maybe there’s some sort of different level they function on, where thoughts aren’t words. After all, there are so many instances in our lives where we don’t need to use words to communicate: a loving glance, the memory of a smell, the brush of a hand, different colours, music, almost everything about our lives is given to communicating, and very little of it, when you stop to think, is done with words. Maybe when we’re born we think in colours, and every sound we hear, unmuffled by our mother’s belly for the first time, is perceived as a colour, and this gives us the ability to dream from the first breath. Or maybe it’s smell. After all, smell is more linked to memory than any other sense. Maybe the connection of smell to memory is linked to how we first learnt to dream, cradled in our parents arms, associating smells with new sensations.
Either way, what to babies dream of?
Impossible question to answer, so this is what I decided, sitting back with Aiden in my arms, what I want babies to think and dream of.
There is so much potential that you hold in your arms when you cradle a baby, it’s incredible. There is the potential to change the world, to impact the entire population of the planet, for good or bad. You could hold the next Leonardo Da Vinci in your arms, or the next Joseph Stalin. They might create something that it remembered for generations to come, or they might destroy what others have done. They could be remembered for generations to come, or become part of human history without impacting it in the slightest. Potential seems to me very similar to miracles. A miraculous event can be as bad as it can be good due to a series of coincidences. In the same way there’s no way to measure how good or bad a child’s potential is. What I like to think that a baby dreams about, in those first months of life, before language exists and there’s just the senses, is their own potential. Their own potential to change the world, dreams about how they’re going to accomplish those changes, and hopes for the future. Maybe in those first days, when life is a chaotic scramble and every sense is tested for the first time, those tiny eyes are flickering behind closed lids and plotting a course in life, in dreamful sleep, that is no more explainable to them as it is to us.
Whatever they are dreaming about, as Aiden’s uncle I’ll do my best to help him get there.
Sitting in McCarren Airport again, waiting for a flight to take me up to Eugene, OR, and my new Nephew. That, and the grey hairs I may or may not have found recently seem to point to my being unable to deny getting older any more.
We always figured Lorna would have kids first. When she was little, she had this doll that went practically everywhere with her, even though when she got it it was almost the same size as her. And as it got taken to place after place, it started to suffer. The head developed a tendency to fall off, which was hilarious when people actually mistook it for a baby. Anyway, Lorna was always fascinated with babies, but she always seemed shy around them. Me? I guess I didn’t feel either way. Somewhere there was the knowledge that I was one once, but getting older took me further and further away from nappies and prams (except for a really bizarre party we had once. . .) until they seemed irrelevant. There just wan’t any point or need of babies in my life.
Until recently, when all my friends have started sprogging. The trip up to Portland last year was to meet a bunch of them. This trip is to meet one that I’m actually related to, and I couldn’t tell you the last time there was one of those. Apparently my world’s going to change. Apparently I’m going to want kids of my own when I meet my Nephew, Aiden. Apparently all my vacation time is going to be taken up visiting him. This is what I’ve been told by a few people now, and while I’ll never say no way, I still doubt it.
I’m not old enough for kids. I’m still to selfish. Whether I love the little bugger or not, my next vacation is going to be a trip back to Europe. They can come visit me in Vegas, but I really have no desire to fly out to North Carolina. And the only extent that I think my world’s changing is that I’ve got one more birthday to remember, which I’ve never been good at. What’s one more birthday to forget each year?
And the kids of my own? Jury’s still out. Jury will probably still be out until I a) die alone, b) stand there holding my firstborn, c) get killed my one of my kids so they can get their inheritance. Until I reached about 24 I was vehemently against kids of my own. Then I mellowed, due to a couple of relationships that I realized ‘yes, I think this woman would make an incredible mother.’ It became about someone else rather that myself. A couple of them are proving that they are incredible mothers, but not to my kids, and there’s one that I shudder I even thought it.
My sister’s the sort of person who’ll be a great mum. She always wanted children for their sake, not hers. She didn’t need children to validate herself, or to confirm her and John’s marriage. And that’s why I’m no interested in having children at the moment. Because there’s no need for them in my life, there’s no desire for them in my life. And there’s actually no way for them to be in my life, cos you kinda gotta shag for that to happen.
So for now, I’ll settle with being an uncle. I’m going to be an awesome uncle. Maybe not a great brother, but why change things now? I’m going to spoil the kid, take him out for his first beer, tell him stories of travelling and cruise ships and vegas, and completely and utterly fill him young, impressionable mind with all sorts of things to get up to. . .
Shit, maybe I will be spending more vacation time visiting him. All that stuff takes face time.
Is what’s going to kill us all. Not climate change, or war, or religion, but greed.
Now, we might all die because of climate change, but we’re helping that along quite merrily because of the greedy bastards out there who want more all the time. We might all die in a planet-wide nuclear holocaust, but I guarantee it’ll happen because some smarmy shit in a suit somewhere is trying to get a larger slice of the pie. People claim that religion has killed more people than anything else, but I’d hazard a guess that most of those wars weren’t started over belief, but over greed. The crusades were a grab for land and loot and an excuse to levy taxes.
And the probelm is that greed is everywhere you look today. It starts at the top, and goes all the way down. Almost everyone wants a bigger slice of the pie than they’ve already got, whether it’s a bank or an oil company, or even me. I want more than I’ve got, for sure, but I don’t want more if I’m taking away from someone else. And I would say most people are like that. I’ll take a pay raise, but as long as it means someone else isn’t having their pay cut.
Greed is royally fucking this country up, but not just because of corporate bonuses and bailouts. It’s the greed of the media that is doing more damage to America than anything else, because of people like Limbaugh and Beck. Here’s why.
One of the things I hear over and over is that these people are just entertainers. They say what they need to, get their audiences going, and cash in. But there’s a problem when the people listening to you believe what you’re saying, and start fighting against their own best interests. If they’re just entertainers, then where are the disclaimers? It’s like we as a country are all calling in to phone-sex numbers, and believing what’s being said to us on the other line– the difference is, the ads for those have discalimers that it’s for entertainment purposes.
Right now in the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of gallons of oil are pumping out of a BP well and doing immeasurable damage to an entire ecosystem. Probably because someone somewhere, answering to shareholders, cut a few corners to make a few bucks. And yet Limbaugh has made a point of attacking environmentalism and conservation, because more often than not it conflicts with making money. I’m sure in the next few days he’s going to come up with some bullshit statement and convince half his audience that there’s nothing wrong with what’s happened down there.
At least BP posted record profits last year, so they can afford the clean up bill this is going to cost, right? They’ve got money lying around, they’ll take care of their own ballsup, right?
Wrong. That’s not going to fly with the shareholders. What’s going to happen is they’ll ask the government to help. The government will help, but the cost of deploying the coast guard and national guard, and whomever they throw at this problem, well, that’s going to come out of tax money. Meanwhile, BP will lament the damage that this has done to their bottom line, and ask for tax breaks from the government. The government, whether you think it should be bigger or smaller or non-existent, is ultimately there for us. That’s why we get to vote. That’s why when something like this oil spill threatens to devastate a chunk of the country, they are duty-bound to do something about it. But I’m fed up paying taxes so the government can use that money to clean up the fuck-ups huge corporations make over and over. I want better roads and education. I want universal health care. All should be easy to pay for if we stopped giving these companies tax breaks and incentives. Guess what? If you can’t afford to do business without tax breaks and incentives, then you’re a casualty of captialism, deal with it.
And if Beck keeps going on about how the businesses need incentives to create jobs and fuel the economy, well it just so happens that there’s one business that looks like it just destroyed hundreds of jobs along the gulf coast. Or maybe he’ll explain that the oil spill is a good thing, because the clean-up is going to create jobs.
BP: Admit that you fucked up, and pay for the clean-up yourselves. Don’t take it to court, just accept responsibility.
Limbaugh and Beck: If you don’t truly believe what you’re saying, then accept that you’ve got enough money and admit it was all for the ratings. If you do believe what you’re saying, well the you’re fucktards.
