On The Wings of the Angel

So often is the case over 42 years...another angel has grown wings and slipped the surly bonds of our compassion, leaving the many times shattered heart, in pieces yet again.

Jean de La Fontaine stated that , "Sadness flies away on the wings of time". Some how I fear this time it will not.

We had already discussed the ideals of children, marriage and more. This was the one...the last one as it would seem.

Perfection  was this angels name. But as a friend wrote today on Facebook, "if you are not on the same page, perhaps its time to shut the book."

Well the Angels book has been closed and stored on the growing library of my life.

From the beginning we never truly clicked. I stated far too early what my heart screamed and due to others in her past she chose to believe that honesty was fiction rather than truth.

The fact she learnt I was a writer, turned against me too. 

"Words are easy" I was told. 

If only she knew how hard they are for me to find right now.

My heart stopped in her presence, my world existed when she was near me, my breathe halted unless I knew she was soon to be with me yet again.

Of all the angels, over 43 years, this was truly the one. 

I believe I am done now. 

A solitary life will be easier and less painful over time than to face the difficulties of the past few weeks.

A heart scarred can never be the same again. This time the wound cut deeper than most and the heart has grown cautious.

Perhaps its life, the world or challenges of love that have changed. For me the truth is the truth. It hurts not to be believed. it actually stings to be called a liar when the only words you speak are from the heart.

You can not make people love you. You can not make people believe you and it is pointless asking some one to stay when they have doubt.

"I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had." so spoke the words in Wonder Years.

"Maybe part of loving is learning to let go."

Perhaps my whole life has lead me to this place? I learnt the following poem by Walter De La Mere when I was aged 7 or 8. Mrs Lawrence made me recite the poem at a school reading. Perhaps the words, learnt and programmed into me, recited for weeks before the presentation actually permiated my conscious. Perhaps I have been programmed all these years for nothing more than loss. 

WHY? 

Ever, ever

Stir and shiver

The reeds and rushes

By the river:

Ever, ever,

As if in dream,

The lone moon’s silver

Sleeks the stream.

What old sorrow,

What lost love,

Moon, reeds, rushes,

Dream you of?

(Walter de la Mare)

Did I learn anything from angel who visited me so briefly. Yes I did!! Perhaps the longest piece of Arabic in six years, 

"La ilaha il Allah, Muhammad rasullallah".

She taught me tolerance and she taught me to embrace a religion I had never considered before. One which I will continue down its path long past these difficult days. 

I also learnt that a heart void of love itself can never give love. She thought highly of herself and lowly of me, I was cool with that despite the angst of my friends. I saw the faults that she did too, but I enjoyed the fact she told the truth. In the end I saw it differently. She told the truth about myself by was blinded to that about herself. I feel sorrow for her there, for she could be such an amazing person, had she simply seen the world has faults not just the one screaming love toward her.

Anyway folks, it is done. Time for me to return to the world of reality. Bitter and sore, but needing to move on.

I stated once before that I needed to move past the subject of love. The next posting will be the last on the subject for a long time. It will be the obituary to love. Never fear it is nothing but a writers words. But it is the final say on a subject that my heart needs to clear before life returns to some semblance of normality. If normal can be attained with a gaping whole in ones heart that is !!

When Dreams Get Blurry

A friend wrote on his blog yesterday; (http://paulbritton.blogspot.com)

“You can plan your life and set all the goals in the World, but the World has a not so strange way of doing the opposite.

Do you work for happiness or should you make happiness work for you? I think the latter. As a chef as in life you strive to always improve and learn, hoping to drive your career to meet your goal, before striving for the next!

Is life just a continuum for improving your knowledge and skill and looking for the next best job with bigger salary and or job title ? “

James Claire was born in 1969, the last of the free thinking, free believing sixties children. The “Mommas and the Papas”, California Dreaming still plays in my head all these years later. I remember, although not the actual day, Man’s landing on the moon, about a month after my own First step on this planetary body. Neil Armstrong and I both made the world a better place to live in 1969.

Landing on the moon gave us all dreams of being astronauts and explorers. It was a great time.

Early seventies with our bell bottom bad taste clothing and absurd colour schematics that possibly drug induced parents thought were cool, probably gave us children the ability to dream even harder. I could have been a clothes designer. In the seventies anyone could have been had they just designed anything 360 degrees different to what everyone was wearing.

Today August 14^th 2011, I am living in a world where all my dreams have blurred. I’m a little lost my friends. In essence Im the luckiest man alive. I have been offered multiple amazing options for the remainder of my life and I have the choose the right one. But do I live the dream , do I sell my soul for cash or do I take the responsible corporate career choice !

Another dear friend wrote to me today and explained that to find the vision I need right now, the direction to life from here to eternity,  that I need to address the THREE ME’s. He stated them as the James who writes, the James who Cook’s and the James who just wants to be the free radical and have fun.

I see it slightly differently; as the Philosopher, the Creator and the Adventurer.

I once had a singular career. I now have two. Both drawing me in totally different areas.

I’m not scared to state that at forty two I’m a little apprehensive. Just like Neil Armstrong must have been blasting off on a mission to a planet no one had ever landed on before.

I too am thinking, is this sane!

As kids dreams are crystal clear. They have a point.!

I want to be a fireman to fight fires, I want to be an astronaut to go to the moon. What those dreams don’t have is repercussions, politics , or old people in them.

Dreams of just a few years ago where to continue climbing the corporate ladder.

My dreams of today are to have a family, have children and  raise them safe and well.

But to do so, one needs money. (ahh the root of all evil? ) The writer/philosopher can etch out a living for sure, but at a slower pace and possibly not at the rate the children will require.

The Creator Chef can easily earn the vast sums required from any corporate position but there are days the body feels prematurely aged and not willing to climb the ladder any longer.

And the Adventurer, well his head is in the jungles of Borneo and wandering the lush hills and valleys of the Tuscan hillsides , boating on Lake Cuomo and sailing along the Amalfi Coast. The Adventurer can have a great honeymoon but unless there is a wealthy benefactor his dreams will crash and burn faster than most.

Are we just put here on earth to work for 60 years then die?

Why are only such a small percentage of us allowed to earn excessive amounts of money that allow them to live freely and live their dream?

Is it best to chase the dollar over all else just to give the next generation, the life we wished we had lived ourselves, or is it better to raise children in a low income but high love family environment.

I am at the precipice of a major life dilemna.! Perhaps at 42  I am suppose to just go buy a Ferrari and enjoy that my future wife looks great sitting in it !!!

But that’s not me. Me is sitting in apartment 26 floors above reality looking out on a vision of blurry dreams.

Carl Jung wrote in his Psychology of the Unconscious of Dreams , “Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown."

The dreams of which I speak are perhaps childhood wishes of what life should have been for us all, had we all remained children. Dreams of my adulthood are far simpler, financial, safety, family.

Yet the manner to get there is not simple. Do I sell my soul for stability or do I fight the corporate ladder for respect or do I meander through life and just hope and pray every day that “something” will get us through to the next.

But life is not as Charles De Lint wrote in the Onion Girl,” What I want to do is travel deeper and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home.”

Dreamer/Philosopher/Writer James may live there and have his home in Dreamland  but sitting here, right now, as James the Creator, I think that all these questions are in fact just the dreamer within.

Reality is I have to go to work whether I like it or not. Reality is responsibility and responsibility means providing for a family, even if at this moment I don’t have one!

Well, as they say, One can dream right !

Better the Devil You know

One of the many sayings of my mother when I was young was “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”.

To be honest, in my youth, I did not know any devils. And I was surprised she did. She was a saint!

Years have passed and I don’t speak to the wisest woman of my life as often as I should any more, but thankfully she seemed to have spoken so much to me over the past 42 years that it finally is starting to sink in and make sense.

I guess when you don’t see some one you miss them more, when you don’t speak to them, you remember the words they spoke previously.

And so I remember the words of  my mother, and thankfully age has made me a touch wiser and a little quicker on the understanding of her wisdom.

Strangely it happens to be at this very time that I find I am leaving a current employ for this very reason.

Friends , or at least work colleagues and I had worked for several years with someone we deemed less than ideal. Fact is, said person did a fair job based on parameters of the position offered. I can not explain, more than to say, we all have our job description and those who both hinder and assist the same.

She was caught between us who demanded more and those above her that demanded less, or at least forgave her for less.

And so when time came for her life change and a career move, well, we welcomed the change.

And of course this is where I should have listened more intently to my mother. Having sought a change and welcomed the new person on board, well that was the last happy days of our lives. All else went down hill following. 

We would all gladly welcome back the old days, forgive the mistakes and  forget the problems , just for the peace calm and happiness we actually enjoyed back then, certainly compared to now.

Some times it truly is better to stay in a less than ideal situation rather than risk making a change and winding up in a spot that's even worse.

But that brings me to another saying, “Hindsight is a vision 20/20”. Indeed it is. In looking back to the past we can see the mistakes and find the answers, which we could not at the particular time. Everyone can be smart after the fact.

But of course, as with everything, I find that the saying about, “better the devil you know”, has aged a little the same as my mother.

You see, back was a time when it was indeed better to “put up”, with a problem rather than suffer a change.

In today’s world, we simply suffer as long as we can and then , without a positive outcome, we have choices.

And choices it has come to.

Life is too short to suffer at the hands of fools and those out to cause grievance merely to cover up their own complacencies and incompetancies.

“In the end, its not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years that matters”.

And we should all live this philosophy.

 It does not matter whether you are single, married, employed, un employed, happy or sad, we all have a predetermined length of life.

Whoever made us, decides our fates.

It’s the days in between that are up to us.

Some “devils” will be sent along to test you, some we should put up with as the other option could be worse. But if in the end there is no choice; leave.

Happiness is up to us individually. No one else can make you happy if you are not feeling it inside.

If you are not happy, first ask why? Sometimes its not the people around you that’s the problem as you may think, it could be you who has simply outlived or out stayed your current situation. Seek a change, find peace and happiness inside yourself and you will find the same in life.

And so, I’m off. Off to make sure the life in my years truly counts. Newer shores await and the tally of my travels , currently standing at 79 countries , hopes to grow larger faster.

To my friends and colleagues traveling too, may the wind blow swiftly and safely at your backs and remember , in the words of Henry Miller, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

And may we see many new things in the countries on which our feet are about to disembark.

History Lesson

If there is any doubt that we never learn from our mistakes, then I am living proof.

That is, I have lived so long already that I have seen all the mistakes of our parents and grandparents come back and be perpetrated by our own generation.

What is our problem, even way back in 400 BC, Euripides stated, “Who so neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.”

Over 2000 years later I think we have much to learn indeed.

I remember the stock market melt downs of the 80’s , the 90’s and what did we learn? Seems very little! Greed lead us down the same track yet again within the  new millennium. It just keeps coming!

When I was young I remember the Australian dollar being equal with the US dollar. It took twenty years for my parents investments to get back to being worth something. Now the US Dollar and the Australian are past parity again. I’m resolute to hang onto everything I have for twenty years more, if I have learnt one thing at least it is that everything that does go up, will not stay there for ever, if it doesn’t, I pity my children.

On top of things we seem destined never to learn, there is a growing list of things that have just stayed the same. And I mean have not changed one ounce despite all the technology , all the smarts we think we have?

Man never returned to the moon if indeed he got their the first time! (before you bark, show me proof!) and man never did get to Mars- wat of the childhood fantasy novels of our youth!!

Of things more Earth bound, we learnt in the 70’s and 80’s of millions, dying of hunger, poor medical, poor sanitation, lack of water.

The borders have changed, the names not the same, but it is still there. What has changed is that we now have billionaires, but what has not changed is the numbers of those living in absolute destitution. If it has , it’s only gotten worse.

What about things closer to home. Technology and our airports. They are all much bigger than ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Many more of us travel these days and corporations running them have made massive profits. Yet we are still required to line up like cattle and to catch a bus to the airplanes.  We have spent billions building newer more modern airports, yet planes still don’t fit and their still is not enough  space for them all.

In the 70’s we thought of the Jetsons  animated cartoons as being futuristic. Yet forty years later compared to them, we still seem to dwell Earth bound like the Flintstones.

My other said of things like this, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

I never got that for about 35 years, but it’s becoming quite clear now.

We are moving so fast down the road to technological advancement that we seem to be missing things, quite glaringly obvious things in our quest to slap ourselves on the back and be proud of the few things we are achieving.

I guess it was that ignorance, arrogance and stupidity that lead to General Motors going bankrupt. Continually coming up with new cars, just failing to ensure that enough people where actually buying the old ones. Some things seemed to get missed along the highways of advancement, I guess.

History is our greatest teacher. We should stop for a while and learn from her. An article in a newspaper recently stated that many school children know everything about modern celebrities yet 65% or some ridiculous figure thought that Buzz Lightyear was the first man to step foot on the moon.

If it wasn’t true it would be funny.

I grew up as part of the age that questioned everything, even we conspiracy theorists are glad that Buzz Aldrin seems to finally be getting his time in the limelight.

We as a generation, think we are so smart, yet we are not teaching our children properly about the past. We don’t have to live in it, or dwell upon it,  but we should learn from it, so that we stop repeating past mistakes, learn from our mistakes and move forward as a race.

Otherwise we are bound to end up like the Egyptian, the Mayans,  Aztecs, the Romans, people who built great empires and then disappeared forever.

If we don’t start to learn then the words of W. Edwards Deming (1900 - 1993) will hold our future, “Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.”

A Slice of My Lyfe - Guest Blog

A dear friend and reader of Bahrain This Month's Last Word column asked me to write a guest posting for her blog.
Anita Menon, is not only one of the nicest people around, but also a wizz at the internet and Blog world and I am happy to say she was the teacher to this student of how to get connected into the world of Blogs.
I was only too happy to guest post for her.
http://sliceofmylyfe.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/a-guest-post-by-james-claire-on-kindness/

Many who read my blog postings may sometimes feel, as was commented to me recently, "your job is to write flowery words", but these blogs are not my job. I write well perhaps, but the underlying words are heartfelt. When you read the posting on "kindness" take a moment to remember that these are not simply words, but part of my history. All that I write about, actually happens or happened to me at one time or another. The emotions are real, the tears are salted and the grief forlorn.
In writing I not only cleanse myself of pains of the past, but hope that I can connect to others who have, had or will suffer or enjoy some of life's inevitable experiences.
A traveller, an adventurer, a writer and a romantic, these postings are life as only I have seen it. Truth, pain, love and fun.
Be safe all and please "Follow Me" to receive the latest writings of an adventurer on the loose.
And follow my friend and blog counterpart Anita, in her Slice of Lyfe adventures too.    http://sliceofmylyfe.wordpress.com/
Thank you and see you again soon.

The Truth Does Not Always Set You Free !!!!

A colleague stated today that “I am stupid when it comes to love.”

Funny that she is closing in on 30 and still has the same issues as the majority of us, and is single.

If there is a singular topic that could be endlessly debated amongst people more devisive than religion, politics or sex, I truly believe it would be the issue of “Love.”

“Love” is to everyone person, something completely different.

As I have learnt, just because you love someone and are injected with a passion of a thousand suns for them, just because you can not breathe when they are not with you, just because when you are with them the world feels whole, complete and at peace, unless the other person feels the same, it means nothing toward the chance of a relationship.

I was also told that I “cheapen the word, "Love" because I use it too easily,”

I do not agree.

I am 40 years old, am widely traveled, have enjoyed two successful careers in two vastly different areas and am comfortable in life. The way I see “Love” is that if I feel it, I should say it.

That simple! 

I will not psycho analyse the hell out the situation. I feel love, I feel loved therefore I say I love you.

If that just happens to be the second time I’ve met you then you know what, how about you trust that at 40 I’m actually in tune with my self, my soul and my body and believe the words that I speak.

These blogs where never set up to discuss the trivialities of my love life. 

Even I’m bored about the whole subject. 

What gets me hot is the fact that others see me as crazy, see me as being impetuous, as ruining the word love.

Seriously! You who question me, have never stood in the shoes from whence I see!

You do not know the heart ache and heart break I have endured and you have not endured the life and times that I have, never known the speed at which life can be extinguished leaving you to wish you had said more, faster.

What I learnt from this whole exercise is that we truly are different and unique individuals. 

That love is a fickle topic. 

Just because one person feels love for another, does not mean that happily ever after will ensue.

But what it has shown me even more so, is that even when you speak the truth and plead with another that what you know you are saying is exactly how you feel, well, unless the other person is open minded and can allow themselves to see the world through your eyes, it does not matter, they will still not believe you.

I am starting to see now how someone could be mis-judged guilty when actually innocent of a crime.

The Truth does not always set you free !!! 

It may make you feel better inside about yourself, but it does not mean you will be believed.

I always thought that most people did not like me because I spoke the truth and the truth is not what they wanted to hear all the time. 

Living in denial is easier and less hurt ful.

But this whole “Love” scenario of recent weeks has shown me that even as I have pleaded my case to another, I can see in her eyes that she has already made up her mind that I not telling the truth.

She has based my answers and her expectations on pre-conceived notions of who and what I am. 

I am a writer, therefore the words are fictional flowery and perfect all the time.

I love too easily - thus I lie.

The fact is, she is blinded by her past and the actions of previous boyfriends.

I am superfluous to the whole tale. 

It would not matter who I was in this instance, she was never ever going to believe anyone who told her they loved her.

I am the poor participant in a tragedy due to other people’s lies and hurtful ways toward her.

And so what does this teach me?

Well for one, it teaches me to give up on the notion of love. Way too much time and money is wasted on trying to meet the right person, because even when I have met her, she may not believe me!! Mon Dieu!!

And secondly, it teaches me to never stop telling the truth.

This whole situation is because of other peoples previous lies, which makes her not believe me even though I plead and speak the truth.

If we all spoke the truth, if we all taught children to never lie nor to hurt another with vicious words, then the world would indeed be a better place, where love could be felt, could to told and could be believed by us all.

I think I just fell in love with the “truth”.