Tourist in Mourning

I've been a tour guide or tourist for about three weeks now.

Honestly, I'm pretty pooped out. Not that the sea of people that have been coming through aren't welcome. It's almost as if I just wish I could have a whole day to myself and then resume.

Whenever I can't sleep I pretend the whole world belongs to me for a year. No one is in it but me. (There is a host of rules and things to keep it sustainable for a year, but we won't get into that.) I can go in any door, drive any car, even fly a plane around for fun.

Right now, I would dig that.

The problem is I know that in two weeks I would be lonely. Suddenly all those people would be greatly missed. The sidewalk rage I feel down St. George's Street would even be missed. And I would also think of my friend who is gone, which would in the end make me a little ball of pathetic in the middle of whatever palace I had decided to take over that week.

A while ago I had a friend whose father passed away. He said that he felt like the whole world should've stopped as it had all stopped in him. Yet everything kept going, his kids kept growing, you can't freeze time. So I am a tourist in mourning. Next to me dear friends and loved ones I want to cling to, while at the same time wanting to go back and grab at something gone. Like forgetting to take a picture of yourself in front of some important building that gets destroyed the next day due to a natural disaster.

This is a difficult ride right now. But tomorrow is work and some bit of normal. I have to grasp for normal, and appreciate what is here right now.

On travel, broken promises, and hellos and goodbyes.

It was foolish, really, to think that in the span of five people visiting I would blog fiction everyday. I wanted to try, and by day four it became impossible.

Not that I won't try again, I have lots of material to work with.

I've discovered the Pitts River Museum. It was under renovation when I moved here, but now it's open and wonderful. It's full of whistling arrows, models of who-knows-what, mummies, shrunken heads, you name it. It's dimly lit. You go in, get a torch, and just find weird stuff.

I've also rediscovered Paris. It's highs and lows, and it's glorious outer world of Versailles. I got to see an old friend and marvel at 'sparkly Eiffel Tower.' Seriously worth a look once in your life.

I got to say "Hey" to London again. To see it through the eyes of someone who has never had such the chance. To remember being scared of Tube maps and constantly overwhelmed and awed at such an intense city.

I said goodbye to someone I care for dearly due to life, mercifully, not death. People change, people move on and do different things. It wasn't the way I really planned for it to happen, if you can plan such a thing. I will mourn this for a long time, but will be grateful for the time I had.

And now I have my last little group of people. We've gotten them through their stay awake phase, now to let them rest and take them about in the morning.

And then, then, back to life. Maybe.

Day Three: SHOWTUNES!

I stepped off the bus, holding the red envelope. Terminal 5 has this lovely smell of diesel fuel that reminds me of my youth. Strange, how it is, when you realize that diesel fumes can provide a happy memory. No cars are allowed to drive around in arrivals. They have to park. If you want to get picked up you have to clamber all the way up to departures.

Heathrow. I'm horrifically familiar with Heathrow. I was the Queen of Terminal 4 once, back when there was only four terminals and people were chaining themselves to the construction of Terminal Five. Those were the days. It was my three hour waiting session for a colleague to pick me up (only recently surpassed by a four hour session waiting for the dog to clear immigration) that put me on a more than personal level with Heathrow.

Plus there was this overnight stay I did once there that I will NEVER EVER do again.

I digress. Red envelope. In it was the following note:

You are here to pick up your brother. He will arrive at 10:10 AM from Atlanta. Do what he says and nobody gets hurt.

I looked over the card once, twice, three times a lady and pondered. Cops regularly walked the Terminals. (I should know, I had to explain myself several times.) All I needed to do was find two and...

"Nobody gets hurt," came a voice from behind me. I started, turned, and there was Nana.

"You're reading my card," I said back to her, matter-of-factly.

"Yes, but I can also tell you that despite what you might think, dear, you should do what it says."

I was puzzeled. This woman had more mood swings that Lana Lange on Smallville. What was it now?

"He's watching you, that gentleman," she didn't point, she sort of looked over my shoulder. "He was on the bus. He didn't help you on the bus, but he was there. I think... I think that if you don't do what it says, then dear, if you have family or friends or loved ones. They are in trouble." She then walked up, smiled, shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder. "I'm doing this because I don't want to be one of them. Goodbye and good luck."

I turned and walked away from her with purpose. If this was all about the £40 difference on the contract I was writing, then obviously this man was crazy. But maybe I was missing something. Maybe I needed to change perceptions, look at the world with the happy diesel smell. Whistle, shuffle my feet, maybe twirl or jump or do jazz hands.

It was obvious who the 'man' was. Another pressed suit. Granted, black is the color for England. I remember sitting in the lounge looking at all the black jackets, black dresses, black, black, black. But he was just too neat and too tidy to be there. This was not a harried businessman, this was security. I tried not to stare as I wander into the Terminal. International Arrivals, there would be two exits he would immerge from. There I would wait against the cold metal pole and crane my neck, knowing only I was looking for a male.

Day Two: Mystery

I woke up, shaken, disoriented.

"WelcomeaboardtheHeathrowExpresstobuzzbuzzbuzz..." suddenly mumbled out above me. It was light. When the metal hit me it was afternoon. Surely I had not lost a day. I tried to scoot upwards. I seemed to be smashed between two blue seats, and I was definitely moving.

Above my head I heard a voice. "You alright there, love?" I turned myself over, facing a kindly English woman who looked like she would be a kindly English Nana. She gave reason to the word Nana, which only prior had applied to my Great-Grandmother. I checked myself once-over, and was grateful I was at minimum, still fully dressed.

"Yeah," I mumbled back. She held me steady as I pulled myself up and got wind of my surroundings. It was the Heathrow Express bus. A bus I was overly familiar with in my last line of employment.

"Friends were nice to get you on. Said they were all worried you'd miss your brother's arrival," Nana was keeping a chat going, though her eyes suggested that my 'friends' were anything but. I felt my face, it was swollen. "Must've been a nasty accident," she said. I am sure she was poking at the reason I had most likely been hauled, bloody and semi-conscious, aboard a bus to the airport.

"It was," I said as I hauled myself to the bathroom in the back.

The light flicked on over my head and I sealed myself in. A quick check in the tiny mirror suggested that I had decided, on a whim, to bruise the left side of my face for fun. Outside of that I had everything that I was supposed to have on me. My trousers, my shirt, my jumper, but zero ID and cash. I wasn't going to be getting back on the bus to go home. This was a one-way trip.

Stumbling out of the bathroom I made my way back to Nana. Her wide eyes suggested she would miss every plane, train, or vehicle of transport to see me to the authorities if needs be. So I risked it.

"So who escorted me on?" I asked, no joking in my face.

"Well, a nicely dressed man, and what appeared to be a younger male, though he was just in his trousers and jeans," she trailed away, "He didn't look like a hooligan or anything so I don't think..."

"I'm fine. Just the bruise," I reassured.

"They said you had a few, took a fall, but that your brother was coming and if you didn't meet him your Mom would kill you. So alcohol poisoning or no, you were going to Terminal 5. They even gave me his flight and all that in this little envelope." She pulled a red envelope from a folder and handed it to me.

I pulled it open and noticed that there were things inside besides the flight information. I looked back at her. "Anything else they say?"

"No, no. You were in the seat when we started, nasty turn we hit. Why they didn't buckle you I have no clue."

Nana started to look more shaken. She was deliberating, I could tell. She was concerned for me but worried about her safety as well.

"No worries, ma'am," I said, mixing English and southern properly. "I have everything I need. I can find my way to my brother just fine. Honestly, I just don't know what got into me."

"No dear, I'm pretty sure you didn't."

Over-dramatization of Life: Day One

I have decided, somewhat oddly, to spend the next 30 days writing overly dramatized accounts of some part of my day. The events are based in fact, but fictionalized. Why? Because it sounds like a challenge.

Day One: Horrors.

"I am defeated... humiliated... stalled... and forelorn..." and that was the start of the email. Staring at the screen I couldn't help but laugh. Here, before me, was a plea for maybe £40 more towards the contract. "I beg... I plead... this is an insult to me."

Surely, this man has nothing better to do than look up the alternatives to suffering in the theasurus. Give it enough time, and you would think that the lack of a week's free maintenance would equal the hallocaust all over again. I slammed the laptop shut. That was enough.

"What terrors alight in the man whose contract is not what they wish!" I exclaimed, to no one imparticular. Next to me, the System Administrators looked up briefly from their bank of computers. With what would be considered a sort of group ritual they stared bewildered at me for a moment, then returned to their PuTTY screens. I had be yabbering about this man for days, they were out of quips.

Air, I needed air. Before I could start typing back the moaning client with words starting with "Dear Mr. Butthead, Shove it. Kind regards..." I needed a walk. There was mail, and down the street, a postbox. I would go there and back and by then a nice, civial response would form in my head.

"Be back!" I yelled as I jabbed the green 'Exit' button. The door opened and then locked shut right behind me. Three flights of stairs, three letters, and a 15 minute walk and I would be right as rain. Of course, I never really understood that phrase until moving to England. Where if it didn't rain after a day people became paranoid and declared an Earth emergency.

I stepped into the gray sunshine and instantly felt the gravel begin to invade the £4 Primark shoes. I had them on because they were flat and fit into my gym bag. Days I ran into work I never had to think about clothes. Not that I needed to think about clothes in a software firm where most of the 90% male population wore the same 5 shirts, but I did strive to be clean and match.

Up ahead of me was this masonry company whose parking lot read like a luxury dealership. I wasn't quite sure if they were really a masonry shop, but there were blocks of things were were trucked in daily, and apparently if you sold enough you got a Mazaradi. I was particularly fond of the red one, which, of course, is cliche. But there it was - front and center, outshining all the other cars that were worth more than my life.

Clutching the letters and the jumper on my form, I acted as casually as possible as I moved as close as possible to the vehicle. "One day," I said in a whisper, "I will have nothing better to spend my money on than a vehicle. Screw world hunger." I could see my reflection on the polish. The messed bun, the Primark shoes, and a man, who was standing right behind me.

"Ohmagawd!" I screamed out and turned. He stood there, patiently, black suit perfectly pressed. "I swear, I swear I was just looking. I wasn't going to do anything to it." I stumbled out. I was a good 20 feet away from the car, had I been heading there so purposefully that he had to ensure it's safety?

His silence rattled me more. He wasn't tall or imposing or the kind of power figure you would think owned a car like this. I really didn't know who actually would outside of the 80s jerk characters in movies. The highest I have ever gotten up on the luxury car rung was a Land Rover.

"It's not a problem," he said back. But that was all. There was no approach, no retreat, nothing. A man in a perfectly pressed suit was staring at me intently. Inviting me to converse.

"It's a nice car." I said, shifting and grinding more gravel into the cheap shoes.

"Hmm." came the response. Still standing. Still intent.

"I'll just go. Sorry. I wasn't planning to touch it," and with that I turned, though I could feel his stare on my neck. I had worn my 'fat jeans' that day, so it wasn't like my butt was looking particuarly recognizable today. Though, still, I didn't feel that the look was sexual. It was more, well, intentional.

I walked towards the postbox. Turning briefly and noticing he was gone. Thank God. Apparently the Mazaradi set includes well dressed, soft spoken lunatics. And to the postbox I went, all the while feeling the gravel grinding out the bottom of my tights. I had had enough of loonies this week, having dealt with the mother of all over such a small amount of funds that it would bring you to tears. In the phone conversations he wailed away about his numerous problems, as if somehow I would eventually bend to what I considered excuses. In the last conversation he spoke of 'pressing me to consider before it all went wrong.'

I gave a wide bearth to the car lot on my way back, and the moment I opened the main door I realized I had forgotten the keys to my floor.

"They are going to give me hell for having to press the buzzer," I thought. Shaking the shoes outside, I slipped them on and headed back in. When I reached the top stair I noticed the light over the hall had gone out. Standing in the dimly lit cooridor I realized I would need to tend to that right after I got back into the office.

As my hand headed to the buzzer I could here the ladies room door opened. This was weird, as I was the only one who used it on this particular floor. I turned, but as I turned I only seemed to help along the metal bar coming in the opposite direction. The connection was painful, direct. Cold metal against bone. Crack. And as I slid down the wall facing opposite the door I heard these words, "I am humiliated...stalled...forelorn...but I will not be defeated..."

Homesickness.

Home is a place where in order to go outside you must first put on your sunscreen 15 minutes in advance, pack water, and upon stepping outside hose yourself down in deet and remember that you can breathe the humid air.

Home is a place where the sand squeaks, the water is blue, and you can get a free t-shirt with airbrush design. Oh, and it's not populated by anyone you actually know, but people from Canada.

Home is a place where, when you see someone walking down the street you wonder if their car broke down.

And while I don't mind this mild weather (great for running), the pub nights, the ability to walk or bike everywhere, the international and glorious nature of people... sometimes I miss home. And that is perfectly okay.