2012

quiet, reflective sunday evenings at home are essential. especially so on the first day of the year. time to take a breath after a whirl of parties and visits, fights and make-ups, cook-ins and clean-ins over the last 12 days(of christmas break). let the mind connect again with body parts that must soon move in a daily routine again. remind the nerves of several small and large unfinished things.
and to think of the year ahead. is it going to be another of those that fly by without much meaning, when in october you start saying - where HAS the year gone? or are all years like this now, because there is too much meaning in each and every year, globally and individually? is 2012 going to change my life? am i going to grow into something better, gentler, calmer. or am i going to stack up all the barrels against me again.
is it going to be a slow, rhythmic year, that celebrates the smaller joys. wish it.
or a rushed haze,with one or two be alls and end alls to live between. i don't like that type of year.
happy new year, everyone.

networking blows

So I ran out on what could have been an AMAZING networking opportunity today. Um... somehow I don’t think so. It was basically a room full of geologists, geotechnical engineers, mining engineers and me. And as soon as I opened my mouth to explain my role in the extractives phantasmagoria (yes) their eyes would glaze over. Sustainabili... social responsibi....impac.....zzzzzzz.
Most of the men were there because an attractive young marketing pro sent the invite. The young women (all fugly) were there because they’d heard that these ‘sundowners’ are they way to get ahead in the industry. everyone seemed really desperate. More than me. And this young hot marketing pro ‘knows everyone’.
As I ran out of there with a smile stuck on my face, the nice young marketing professional looked bemused. I think she was just about to introduce me to two more pillars of the mining industry. But i knew better, I knew they’d want to hear about our CPR capability, our exploration techniques and our Datamine subscription. And all I wanted to talk about was how adroitly one of our clients had plonked a great big mine in the middle of a Wadi that Bedouins had used as a migration route for centuries, how another client had let a little cyanide seep into the watercourse that all the famished villagers used for their cultivation water, and what methods I would use to engage with the artisanal miners of Angola. Utter content audience mismatch.
Sigh. This is going to be difficult.

love is...

when you're tearing your hair out about things, secretly blaming yourself for things, punishing yourself daily for things...and he stops a minute in the daily routine just to say - you're not that bad you know.

CSI

CSI : NY is the latest craze, and i think this one's going to last. it's still on tv for one thing, new episodes come out every week.

i keep looking for dead bodies everywhere; in the subway, in the fire escape behind my office, in the large slanting wall cavities on the h'smith & city line platform at baker street station (what ARE those things?). i was flinching as i loaded the dishwasher in the office kitchen, subconsciously waiting for the hooded attacker to sneak up. i jumped at shadows as i locked up the office door, last out. on the tube a kid with a huge backpack seemed to be eyeing us carefully, deciding if he wanted to detonate his bomb just yet.

living inside tv shows is very dangerous; your boss can suddenly ask you a question about the proposal you should be working on, and the answer isn't written in the dimples of detective don flack.

Impressions of Sakartvelo

Georgia in the Caucasus
Has expanses of green mounds, staked by the faithful
Here a stalwart white cross, there an ancient church.
Orthodoxy flows in the rivers, grows in the forests
But the Lutherans, Armenians and Islamists also thrive, somehow.
Countryside spinning away under wheel, field after field, village after village.
In cities, broken, softening, sagging, crumbling,
shells of buildings
With warm yellow lights within, a people living in ruins.
Personal property, real estate, no cash for repairs,
no buyer good enough, to cure the general malaise
– worklessness.

Give us a job, and we will follow it
Every mountain has its ore
Move and move again
Hamlet to hamlet, spreading industry, pits, reagents, plastics
Medical insurance ranks over cultural heritage
One day perhaps modernity will pass us by
But the vineyards in summer dachas will flourish forever
Orchards will provide, we will return to the land
if metals fail us.

In Tbilisi the TV tower
with flashing lights buzzing progress
pulls away from the fort and bridge and many twinkling windows
the bastions of an ancient culture, unique in language and form
stand sentinel in the night sky
As modern day kartvelebis scurry past, mobile phones stuck to one ear.

the problem

the problem is that they think I know what I’m doing. And I totally don’t! am being given difficult difficult work, but am only producing bad poetry.

Hello world! I’m still here. in a great new job and a lovely settling down sort of marriage, all of which i can now complain about.

And don’t be frightened... that’s only thunder outside your window.

Sheffield fragment

Deserted by 9 PM, South Yorkshire’s gone home

Leaving the city chatter-less

trams crossing over large roundabouts

and Vincent’s (?) face splashed across a 4 storey brick wall.

Next day at the UKBA

a man, polish, trying to be heard

by the English know-it-all but really-know-nothing he’s been allotted to.

whole families spending their day in sarkardom – the Indians feel much at home

their kids fling themselves with glee at a vast concrete column

It stands silently black and granite-clad, as they shrieked high pitched

and run madly around it.

The security guard, never having met a terrorist, smiles indulgently at them

and tells me sheepishly to take a swig out of my water bottle

just in case.

Case-workers at windows, alternatively sunny and dour

Luck’s fickle. This could take all day.

Among other things, I learn that children like my face, but I never know what to say to them.