Today's P&L: GBP 90.00
Today's Booze: 4 pints of Stella Artois, 1 Large Talisker whiskey
Today's Soundtrack: Sweet Soul
Well, my recent melancholy continues, I was tempted to hit the booze but am trying to restrain myself, still drinking more than I should though. I am just so bored with all this. Nothing seems to change I feel trapped. I know everyone feels the weight of their life sometimes, but I didn't for years I went where I wanted and did what I wanted.
Everyone used to ask me don't you feel strange living alone in a hotel but the truth is I didn't. I loved it. I used to wake up after staying awake trading to the New York close, which is about three am Bangkok time. If the girlfriend was in my hotel room, I would wake her up and take a cab across town to where she lived so she could be home before her servants woke up. She lived across from the Royal Palace so the cab would drive back through the wakening city, the street markets beginning to be set up as the cab took me back to Sukhumvit. Bangkok never really sleeps so sometimes I would stop the cab and get out walking through the streets, the homeless sleeping everywhere, the tired hookers still looking for business outside cheap guesthouses. Then I would get home and grab a few hours sleep before eleven am, when after a shower I would head out for my first drink and lunch, usually at my friends pub near the Asok skytrain, just a short walk for me. Then I would drink and chat with friends, moving around the various drinking places until I felt the need to trade. I would normally try and get back about eight pm if there was any important US data. Sometimes I would get back earlier in there was anything big happening in Europe sometimes much, much later if I was having a good time. I rarely took a long-term visa so every month I would fly off for a weekend in Singapore or Penang or Jakarta or Ho Chi Minh and pick up a tourist visa on arrival. I can't count the hours I have spent in airport lounges in Asia.
Maybe I didn't have much of a purpose, but I don't have one here and life is a heck of a lot less fun. The stalker tells me if she marries me how my life will change and I just feel caged. It seems that if you let people into your life you owe them something, that can't be right. I feel like the coyote in the roadrunner cartoons that runs over a canyon and makes it pretty far until he looks down and realizes there is nothing underneath him. I didn't know I was running unsupported in fresh air until everyone told me I was.
Anyway didn't trade much today and missed a substantial fall in the European indexes. Trading is one of those things that if you don't focus you can get burned. Badly.
I was listening to soul and R&B music mostly. Far too big a genre to pick just five tracks, So I won't. According to IPlayer these were my favourites today:
Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay - An absolute classic, reminds me of a drinking in the Hong Kong beer bar in Penang with the lunatic ex and strangely leaving Liverpool on my dads ship when I was much, much younger. Otis had such a smooth voice.
Rainy Night In Georgia - Brook Benton is often overlooked but this song reminds me of how no matter how far away I was, I still thought of home sometimes.
Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight is also overlooked in comparison to the black female superstars, but this song is brilliant; "LA proved too much for the man", sometimes the bravest thing you can do is admit you are weak.
Across 110th Street - Always loved this song, probably the first souls single I brought. Bobby Womack is perfect for this song, Luther or Marvin would have sounded too slick. "Crossing 110th Street is a hell of a tester". I love feeling sorry for myself as anyone who reads my blog is aware and Ok I didn't grow up in Harlem in the sixties or seventies but despite my middle class roots, I have ended up on the wrong side of the tracks far too often for my own good. My working class father tried everything to make sure I didn't suffer but my parents still shake their heads over my self-destructive nature.
Dance With My Father - Really a girls song in my mind, but Luther has such a perfect voice. "If I could get another chance, another walk, another dance with him, I would play a song that would never, ever end". I wonder what my parents, who went home today, will think about me if I die before them. Both my parents are scared of one of them dying before the other.
Harlem Blues - Branford Marsalis Quartet, I love this song. I am a city boy but sometimes everyone needs space to breath. "There are some spots in Harlem, where I am told its sudden death To let somebody see you even stop to catch your breath".
You Are Everything - Marvin and Diana, but the Stylistics version as well. When Marvin Gaye sings "How can I forget when each face that I see brings back memories of being with you, I just can't go on living life as I do, comparing each girl with you when they just won't do they are not you". Such passion, I feel it deep down inside my heart I just can't express myself. I can't remember ever telling someone how I felt about them to their face.
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4 comments:
I hope you're a hugger, cuz you're about to get this -
*BIG HUG*
The purpose in life is to live it our own way. We see so many people do great things and have a great purpose in life, that we feel small and insignificant next to them. Yet we forget about the little things that count. Saying please and thank you (especially when the man pays for dinner, I hear a lot of women forget that nowadays). Holding the door open for a stranger. Giving way to other cars on the road. Maybe your purpose in life is to do the little things which everyone forgets is important yet makes a lot of people happy. You could try that on for size?
If you let someone into your life and you really want them in it and they want to be there then there is no question of owing them anything. Perhaps the stalker isn't 'the one'. Or perhaps you won't let her be.
Can you not just take off somewhere for a while? Shake off the feeling of being trapped and bored? Do something different?
Kitty x
Hi Toni,
I've started reading your blog since you explained the Euro (had a real beating yesterday so I'm told)!! I got a bit emotional at the weekend after drinking rather a lot of whisky - could it be that which is making you feel a bit( to put it crudely) shite?
Perhaps, as Kitty says, you need to do something a bit different and then you'll know what you want, how you feel etc? I too felt very bored and trapped in the UK and moved here. I haven't ever regretted it.
All good wishes,
Euro Anon
I got into a debate about the responsibility towards your significant in one of my classes last semester.
We were reading the play "Angels in America" which is a focus on AIDS and gay culture... I don't know if you've read it. Anyhow, the primary male couple had been together for four years, but one of them had AIDS and was starting to exhibit the physical symptoms, which freaked his partner out, as his partner had a mental issue (I think due to prior experiences) with disease, death, and dying.
So that partner abandoned the dying man.
My classmates were horrified, saying the healthy one had a moral responsibility to his dying partner, that being in a relationship -required- him to be there, no matter what, no matter how uncomfortable or damaging the situation was, because his partner needed him.
There was also a M/F couple where the male was actually gay, but staying with the woman, who had severe psychological issues, out of guilt, out of that moral draw, even though it was wrecking him, even though she was driving him insane, even though he was damaging her further by being with her.
It turned into this thing that lasted a good thirty minutes of debating moral responsibility towards others due to social contracts versus responsibility towards maintaining the health of the self, and the idea I was pushing forward that if someone truly loved you and they were making you unhappy, damaging you in some way, they would release you from that social contract out of their desire to have you happy and healthy.
Which I keep getting called naive for.
The stalker, as you've named her, I don't see why you are with her. Of course, I haven't read all your back entries, so there might be an explanation there. You call her "the stalker". You seem to write of her with this dread loathing, but at times it seems as though you feel like she might... save(?) you. At least stabilize you out.
I'd love a post on her, the dynamic the two of you have, why you are with her, where you met, etc. It'd be interesting.
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