Oxfam etcetera

Well that was quite an interesting week – more from the internal perspective than the outside. Seems like my past – and even my near past – has faded from me, and started to be replaced by what is to come, the writing, the getting serious about my book, improbably inspired/backed up by my weekly horoscope. So Monday I decided to not be in love anymore, needing to not feel how I'd been feeling, no longer able to give emotionally to someone who wasn't really in it to give back. And not that I didn't take loads of overwhelmingly good things from it – I did – but for my own peace of mind, and for the futility of any future – plus, perhaps first and foremost, not wanting to deal with the hurt when they get with someone else – it seemed like what needed to be done (inspired by the words of Roy Orbison's 'Pretty Woman'). It's hard to care for someone who doesn't care for you, awesome and lovely and a good, good friend as they may be; in the long run, it just doesn't seem healthy.
    I could dwell on that, and relate it to things from my past, but I think, instead, as in life, I'll move on: the signs were strong this week, regarding my writing, my book project, and now my head has become filled with that. Things really kicked in on Tuesday – several things slotting into place, unexpectedly, synchronistically – and I can feel the juice building quite nicely. "The time is nigh," I keep saying to myself, and others – and it is. 'Into The Wild' is in the cinemas, 'On The Road' is getting made, and loads of 50th anniversary stuff is happening – including the release of the original manuscript – while the Palins and the McGregors of this world continue to churn out their BBC-sponsored 'adventures' to the delights of millions. The world is ready for me, I feel, and I am ready for the world.
    People say, "Just Do It" – I agree with that, but I also say, "timing." You can't push the flow of the river; you can't make the grass grow faster by tugging on it. Things happen of their own accord, when the time is right. You have to tune in, and try and feel those things, and follow the signs. And when the signs say, "get proactive – now's the time to do it," you do, and with ease, because the juice is there to help you. I learned so much about this writing university essays, of all things, waiting till the very last second to begin, and watching as they appeared in front of me, effortlessly, in amazingly short spans of time – generally about 3 or 4 hours for 2000 words, including research, reading, writing and checking, and getting top quality grades; the full kit 'n' caboodle – and it's given me great faith in the juice. I can feel it flowing now – or, at least, beginning to; really, it's like the time is nigh for the time to be nigh…
    I went to see Amma again this week, down in London, for Wednesday and Thursday. Took four new chums – probably my favourite thing to do there these days – and I think they dug it too, and got something good out of it. She probably is the most amazing person who ever lived. She fills me with awe and wonder, and makes me wish I was doing more with my life; the amount of things she and her followers do for others, so selflessly, is breathtaking. Working for Oxfam doesn't seem to cut the mustard, compared to watching videos of people carrying bricks and cement to rebuild houses and villages destroyed in the tsunami. I cry so much whenever I see that stuff! But all I can do right now is give her money – that seems to appease that feeling somewhat – and wait for a time when I am free from my earthly responsibilities, in writing, and see what happens then. For sure, I want to do more good with my life.
    Oxfam is good, I guess – I mean, in 06/07 we spent £213.2m on helping others, out of a total income of £290.7m, and that's a pretty amazing thing (and typing that here makes me wonder why I should actually question any of it) – it just grates me sometimes when I find out my area manager – who will come here and visit with me for three hours, and say nothing useful within that time – spends £3000 a year just on having his laptop maintained. That doesn't make any sense to me – I mean, how much maintenance does a brand new laptop need? And surely they could find someone to volunteer to do it? It makes me mad because we're here scrimping and saving – and getting pressure to do it – just to save and raise pennies, and he – with his company car and expenses and hotels – is blowing it in what I'd say were pretty pointless and stupid ways. Three grand to look after a laptop! Man, I could probably do that for him – and then he's got the nerve to wonder about the expense of managers like me – I earn £7250 a year – and won't cough up for a new carpet when ours is a dirty disgrace, and talks about people finding cheaper parking when they come to the utterly pointless and boring area meetings that he uses to check out his own voice.
    Of course, though, that's just me being negative – well, the laptop thing, I don't see how that can possibly be justified – but then there's got to be a flipside to it as well. For one, he does do a pretty good job, and though his people skills suck ass like a Soho toilet trader, he's probably not half as bad as some other managers could be. For two – and here's the big one – even though the costs of running Oxfam's shops account for 80% of its trading income (that's £15m net income left out of a total of £75m, after expenses) I guess what I fail to take into account is the way that these shops of ours act so much as the 'public face' of Oxfam, and how they generate income in ways other than through the sale of £2.99 M&S tops and Full Monty videos. £106m comes in from donations and legacies; another £18.5m from specific emergency appeals, such as the one we've just had for the cyclone in Bangladesh, and I'm sure running the shops makes so much of that possible, being here for the public. So maybe the shops themselves don't raise that much – and spend far more than they should, in my opinion – (although £15m profit is hardly small change!), what they do is worth far more than the income they generate alone.
    Also, what I need to remember – and have tried to remind myself of many times over the years – is that you've got to speculate to accumulate, and if I was in charge of a thing like this, with my penny-pinching ways and obsession with thinking all you have to do is raise and not spend at all, I can't imagine Oxfam would get anywhere, would just be another back street charity shop sending a few thousand pounds a year to some local hospice or pet's home. So I balk at the £35,000 my area manager gets paid – it does seem like a lot to me, for a money-raising organisation – but when you compare it to the £213m that actually does go to the needy, I guess it's small potatoes; I guess I can justify it that way. Maybe I'm just too steeped in Amma, where people give so much for free, of their time and resources, and where salaries like that would be unthinkable; even her charitable exploits – which are considerable: $46m dollars to the tsunami victims; $1m to Hurricane Katrina; annual pensions for 100,000 widows; the building of more than 125,000 houses across India and Sri Lanka, plus hospitals and orphanages and universities and feeding programmes – probably don't match that which Oxfam does; I guess I should be happy. It's just when you see the waste – at ground level – and I'm talking the whole laptop thing here – that it's a little hard to swallow. Maybe it's because Amma and her devotees are in it for the love, and doing it for some higher purpose, and we're kind of a business, with pressures, figures coming, ultimately, before the people that we're eventually helping, who always seem to be obscured and at the back of the picture somewhere; who knows why I feel the way I do? Maybe I should just get over it.
    So the rest of my week was pretty mellow, editing chapters and watching movies (War of The Worlds, Secretary) and getting over the tiredness of staying up till 4.30 just to get another touch of Amma's glorious divine hand – oh, she smells so good! (In my darshan this time I just cracked up laughing – which I totally wasn't expecting – and Amma seemed to dig that too; it's hard to explain the feeling in her arms, suddenly the whole world is centred on that spot and the chaos around you has gone and it's just you and her face and you want to stay there forever. I don't know if I take anything lasting from it – I'm maybe too far gone, and too well hugged to have my life changed by her, and by that kind of thing, like I was eight years ago – but it sure is just about the most wonderful thing in the world to experience, and I'm so, so grateful for her. I shudder sometimes when I think about the hole that is going to be left in this world when she's gone; truly, there's never been a saint or another living person like her, that has done the things she's done.) The other great thing this week was down in London, a lazy morning with a chum down there, reading her my chapters – at her request – and seeing how useful that was, in spotting things I wanted to change, and also how great it felt that someone actually wanted to hear more, and more, and more (even though it's 'the boring bit'). That's my kind of friendship; that's what I'd like a little more of in my life. I like being down in London now, after so many years of hating it – but after some serious contemplation and consideration on the subject, it doesn't look like I'll be moving down there, the doors just haven't opened with regard to Oxfam jobs (of which there have been a few). I'm thinking of doing a master's in Creative Writing starting this February (maybe after going away; it all ties in with my Glastonbury clairvoyant's predictions) and I was thinking of maybe doing it down London way – but if the job door don't materialise then it ain't gonna happen. And, of course, I love Leeds, and have a job here, and have been offered a place doing the MA at nearby Sheffield so…well I guess we'll see what comes. I've got three weeks to make a decision on that front – and in the meantime I've got a holiday to think about – maybe India or Africa, for about a month – and I guess we'll see which way the signs're pointing when ticket-buying day comes (whenever that is). I'm waiting for a few signs at the minute – for my holiday, for my writing future, for my living situation – but all I've got so far is the strange significance of about a hundred red Nissan Micras, which is pretty bizarre but may well mean something (and which, I know, to the vast majority of people reading this will sound insane; well, you'll just have to bear with me and watch this space, I suppose).
    In the meantime, I've sold half my nest and poor old Chamone's skis have gone, leaving him homeless and having to move on – well, he never existed anyway, like half the people in this blog – taking with him the magic pills that I've realised did actually have an effect on me, and which he confessed to have been slipping me for about the last six or seven months, before he disappeared/faded into the mist/I shot him/he became plants. That means I live in a nest, loveless (except for the love that fills me and is making my chest glow warm and a smile cross my face as I type) and with Sedona/Perlilly having almost ninety percent erased X, and now the former of those two (oh, pur-lease!) having gone too, and the writing and juice creeping through my insides like an all-pervading creeping red weed, I've come to this place of freedom and focus, sated by the sociability of the past three or four months, and ready to get it on – post-holiday, at least. I'm going to buy myself a laptop soon – not because I need one – well, maybe I do – but because I deserve one, and want a friend on which to do my life's work, and want to be able to do it whenever and wherever I choose, uninhibited by time or place or train journey or anything; when the juice is there, the juice will flow unstoppable. That's what I'm going to write about now – forget woman, forget boobs, forget silly little adventures and car-buying and whimsy, my brain must be pointed east.