People politely waiting (in complete silence and serenity) for parking lot space. This would NEVER happen in LA. It's almost post-apocalyptic-eerie without honking horns. I imagine myself shouting, Is there anyone out there???? And hearing it echo loudly in the cold air.

-- I sent this from my 3 mobile --

Mrs Dalloway on the London Overground

Yesterday, I lived a novel in a day.

At least it felt like a novel. It was a novel worthy of Virginia Woolf, with shades of Mrs Dalloway all over it. Instead of a stream of consciousness and a series of rambling thoughts dotted with occasional insight, you could say my day was a rich range of Experience. Yes, reader, that was a capital E.

Yesterday, I saw a little girl drop her coat on a London Overground train. A tiny butterfly effect really. It was unseasonably warm and this little girl had had her autumn coat neatly folded over the strap of her school bag. As she followed her mother off the train, the coat inched lower and lower to the ground, finally landing in a heap at my feet. What did I do?

This is the part where I feel stunned by what living in London for 5 years can do to you. I hesitated. I debated. Do I get involved? Will anyone else notice and take care of it so I don't have to? Will it be strange for me to pick up this coat and chase a little girl?

Seriously, findingmoxie?!

It's a little girl's coat. Just deal with it. It was my stop and in my hemming and hawing, I nearly didn't make it off the train in time. I snatched her coat off the ground (in testament to the cloud most of us wrap up in, no other person on that train noticed the coat or the lady dashing forward to grab it) and leaped down from the train just as the doors began beeping. I chased after the little girl and tapped her on her shoulder.

findingmoxie: Excuse me, you left your coat on the train.
little girl: [eyes me. eyes the coat. says nothing]
her mother: [to the little girl] Is that your coat?
little girl: [nods, looking down]
her mother: [to me] Thank you. [to the little girl] Say thank you.
little girl: [mumbles] Thank you.
findingmoxie: Not a problem. Happy to hel--
her mother: [to the little girl] WHAT did I tell you about holding onto your coat?! Do you know how much a coat costs? You need to be more responsible!
findingmoxie: Um. [gulps, walks quickly away] [under breath] Sorry, kid.

Okay, so it wasn't a happy ending. And it did cross my mind if I dropped the little girl into it more than if I'd just let her forget her coat on the train. But at least I can say that I saw and did, rather than stared into nothingness, turned off from the city around me. That small act changed my day though.

It became a day where London, itself, seemed richer to my eyes. The colours saturated and alive, and the people, oh the people were suddenly wandering around the city fleshed out and multi-dimensional. You could go a hundred days where everything around you is simply white noise and at best, an irritation. You take no notice of anything around you besides the trains—are they on time or not, which platform will I hurl myself towards, is there a findingmoxie shaped space in that full car—and on these days, you could live in any big city anywhere. Big City, Earth.  But not today. Today, I saw and was seen.  My life crossed strangers’ lives in the smallest of ways and I was left jarred from the contact, as if I'd been woken from a deep but short sleep. Not quite rested, but fuzzily alert, as if I had just come off a transatlantic flight, fallen asleep on the train from the airport and woke up to the sudden sound of air and velocity crashing into one another as a train on the next track rattled heavily past mine. It was a reminder of my own humanity and it felt simultaneously strange and beautiful. 

It made me wonder if that is how people in Small Town, Earth always feel. So part of everything and engaged. As Mrs Dalloway finds herself thinking, I can only wonder if 'this gaiety would have been mine all day' if I were a small town findingmoxie. 

Thank goodness it was my stop. Don't think I would have been able to justify jumping off before my stop to return a little girl's coat (Sorry, Small Town, Earth, but them's the breaks).

In Which Kristen Stewart STILL Looks, Shall We Say, Backed Up

Seriously, I cannot commit on her acting skills--given that I can still boast at being the only person under 33 who hasn't seen any of her films (fist pump of triumph)--but in all her publicity, it's the same uncomfortable look of someone suffering from gummed up internal works.

Observe:

Just saying. 

 In any case, if the public love you for this, run with it, sister. Just please, I beg of you, never claim method acting in an interview. findingmoxie will not be responsible for the uncontrollable mirth that will follow.

Jet-lag May Interfere With Your Castle Love

As it’s practically 100 degrees in London (comparatively, you know with LA and hot places) this weekend, we’re all dreaming of ice cream and castles. Castles, because my sister is visiting and we’re driving out to Leeds Castle to see a CASTLE.

Here’s how the dialogue went last night when we broke the exciting news to my sister, bearing in mind that she may have been jetlagged:

Me: So, do you have any plans?

Shari: Well, it depends. I mean, did you guys want to hang out with me?

P: Of course.

Shari: That’s great! What did you have in mind?

Farnaz: We hired a car and are going to see a CASTLE.

Shari: A CASTLE?

Farnaz: A CASTLE.

Shari: Um, as in a castle?

Farnaz: Yes, a CASTLE.

Shari: What castle?

Farnaz: Leeds Castle.

Shari:  Is it in Leeds?

P: No.

Farnaz: It’s in Kent.

Shari: I mean, it’s just a castle?

Farnaz: It’s a CASTLE. Not just a castle. P, I think she doesn’t get castles.

P: Well, we’ll have to show her. 

In Which TV Teaches Me to be a Better Person

This morning I was just hoping to survive. I was curled up in bed, under layers of fleecy robe and full togged duvet and yet, I simply couldn't stop my teeth chattering. My skin actually hurt--like, it actually hurt to be in my skin. Even in my awkward teen years, never did I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin. This would have made young findingmoxienager seem like Beyoncé on a bad hair year. Pretty confident, considering!

I lay there, trying all the breathing exercises I had unintentionally absorbed during 5 years of yoga and hoped that achieving a 'meditative' state would ease the chattering and set my body at ease. Not so much. It was certainly worth a try. After a good while, I realized that sleep was not coming back for me and hauled my cookies, fleecy robe, duvet cover and all into the lounge where I threw all my hard luck onto our ginormous orange bean bag. I flipped on the television in the time-honored tradition of sick days and waited for something to give.

And it did. Maybe it was the power of distraction, of being pulled away from fretting over oneself and being given an alternative reality. Or maybe it was just the cure-all of teenage drama. Oh yes. What took away my aches and shivers? Nothing but a heavy dosing of juicy US teen dramas. I started with a strong hit of Gossip Girl (in Paris!) and felt an easing. By the time, One Tree Hill was on, I felt lighter. I cannot even convey how amazing the change was. I mean, one minute I was lying in bed, alternating between moaning and clicking my teeth, and the next, I was reclined on a bean bag, chuckling and rolling my eyes (in a good way!) at Blair's typically grandiose expectations and Chuck Bass' shellacked hair. And wishing someone would give Serena a haircut with some life. Oh and that that they would stop calling each other B and S. I mean, honestly. Not. Buying. It. And since we're all girlfriends here, secretly, ever so secretly, crushing on Chuck Bass, shellacked hair and all. Don't know what that boy has that speaks to me, mojo, charisma, whatnot, but whatever it is, he has it in spades.

Lolling on the bean bag, I got ambitious. I turned to House and hoped that while I had little interest in watching it as a series when hale and hearty, it might be worth a sickie one-off. And then this happened:

It was a gift. I won't lie. It made my day. I found myself smiling as if I hadn't a care in the world. Though it won't make me rush out and buy a box set of House, to catch up on all I've missed out on, I doff my hat to you, House. But if House suddenly becomes all about handsome, stubbled men singing 70s soul music, drop me a line and I'll be on it! I tell you what, it was strangely hot watching suited men sing karaoke. I know, I could get that any weeknight at the Silver Cloud in the Marina, but not in London, friends. Not in London.

So this here is a proper journey in my restoration and I ended the day with some truly hilarious Benidorm (British sitcom about an inclusive holiday resort in Spain). It's mostly laughs and me well onto my way of feeling myself again. But what's this? Thong wearing (abusing, more like) old gent, Mel, nearly drowns after knocking his head on the bottom of the pool in an effort to teach belly-flopping Geoff how to dive correctly. It was funny, I promise. But then Mel, moved by his near death experience (his whole life flashed before his eyes and it was blurry because he didn't have his glasses on), proposes to tiny old Madge, because 'life isn't a rehearsal. This is all you get.' BOOM. The words drop like a bell tolling the hour. Portentous, resonant, striking home.

This is all we get, kiddos. I definitely need to get cracking. Tomorrow, when I'm back on my feet, that is.

On Green Dolphin Street

There are books that you read to get through time. Purely escapist books that drag you under their surface and you sink happily, knowing that in a few hours time you'll be shaking it off and striding off without a backward glance. These books do not have power over you; there isn't any risk involved. You have simply chosen to give them time and mind and once the last page is turned, you will emerge unscathed. I suppose these have been my diet of late. Sebastian Faulks' On Green Dolphin Street is NOT one of these books.

I have always respected the power of novels. I know that 'like wine through water,' there are novels that can 'alter the colour of my mind.' I know this. It is one of the things I suppose I have loved most about reading--the fact that it is not just a passive activity. A novel IS the monster under the bed; the fears and lies you have promised yourself you would let lie like sleeping dogs. It is that ledge you play with, dangling yourself over the drop; and when you're ready, the superbly reckless and ecstatic dive into the unknown. It is the enormous boulder in a Canadian lake that you climb on a summer holiday only to realise you now have to jump into the lake and it's a long way down and the water will probably be cold, but that you will do it ANYWAY. It is making it to the top tier of the jungle gym that you could never bring yourself to climb onto as a child. And the rewards have always outweighed the gamble.

Like every other Faulks novel I have read, I came by it second-hand and through necessity. I needed a book and the universe provided one. I should have felt a tickle of premonition. I did not. I began reading it on and off, mostly interrupted by the end of the Harry Potter franchise (which required me to jump into the Deathly Hallows again for full on HP immersion before the big show), but also occasionally through anxiety. Reading OGDS on the train home or at lunch, I would come to and realise that my shoulders were hunched and tight, my breath held and my knuckles white from clutching the pages. The backdrop of the story, set in a time of quickly waning innocence and trust in American history, could account for some of my anxiety. We all know that Kennedy doesn't last his first term and that Nixon will bring home that presidents and governments do lie. Through the lens of history and hindsight, it is a time that always seems like a coil tightening and tightening until it simply snaps. All that glamour and glory reaching a pinnacle and then just falling to ruin: the end of Camelot, Icarus flying too close to the sun. So yes, I was grimacing for these people, unaware that their world would shortly change. Add to that, the emotional baggage from the second World War, the Civil Rights struggle and McCarthyism weighing the characters down. It's no wonder I was a bag of nerves.

Let me stress that that was just the backdrop. The main show was a tightrope of human relationships. Yes, into this already brittle and burgeoning world, Faulks threw in the spectre of human frailty, made all the more poignant because most characters were unaware of their awful frailty. At first glance, it was that old chestnut, wife has affair and ultimately has to choose between love and husband and kids. But somewhere along the way, ( I scarcely know how it happened, credit must go to Faulks' skill as an author), it transcended that cliche. The three central characters became people. Not just husbands, wives and lovers. They were suddenly individuals who needed more from life than life had given them. Which made it all the more devastating when the constraints of morality trapped them in the end. Like Frank, I couldn't believe that bog standard morality would get them in the end and much like Mary, I began to feel as if they had created a time out of this world and their reckoning would never come. But when it did, oh boy.

The whole of the novel was so restrained, so still waters run deep, that the last few pages broke like a dam and demolished all my defences. I felt raw, unadulterated grief. I could have howled with it. I still cannot believe how shaken I was. Silly lady that I am, I thought I could finish it in company--you know, like in a living room with others. Mistake.

The slow burn and the detached depiction of the characters made me believe I could walk away unscathed. Far from it. I set the book down, excused myself and had to stand in a room on my own, clawing my way back from the dark. Maybe the inclusion of airports and goodbyes resonated too deeply with my life. Maybe the conclusion wasn't as powerful and visceral as a fist to the stomach to anyone else (given some of the reviews on Amazon). But it knocked me down. And it's been a while since a book truly leapt out of the dark and knocked me down. I suppose it's because I forgot the power of books and let my guard down.

On Green Dolphin Street dragged out into the light my worst despair, my monster under the bed: saying good-bye to the man you love more than you love friends, life and country and not knowing if you'll ever see him again. It shocked me that even though it's been years and that man and I are happily married, the despair is still there and it will always be there, glinting darkly under the surface. For that reason, the denouement of OGDS will stay with me a long long time.

I begin to think that the human condition is haunted and that Emily Dickinson was right all along:

'One need not be a chamber to be haunted,

One need not be a house;

The brain has corridors surpassing

Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting

External ghost,

Than an interior confronting

That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop

The stones achase,

Than, moonless, one's own self encounter

In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,

Should startle most;

Assassin, hid in our apartment,

Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,

He bolts the door,

O'erlooking a superior spectre

More near.'

Still, I should gamble more often. Reading dangerously keeps you on your toes.

Shades of Gray--no Jasper Fforde, this isn't about you.

All’s fair in love and war.

When I was younger, that never sat well with me. It was too glib, too neat. It seemed to give people license to wrong one another and left those of us who couldn’t wheel and deal at a distinct disadvantage. I could not imagine a scenario where throwing someone over for someone with more appeal could ever be rationalised as the sort of decision made by good people. I was of the mind that you could not be good people if you just took what you wanted without thought for the consequences of your actions on all the other poor saps involved. It was a black and white world. You know the type, a nice and comfortable world where right is right and wrong is wrong. The sort of world we teach our children about and fully encourage to value over all else.

And now, nearly ten years on, I find it’s all going gray. And I’m not just referring to the odd strand here or there, but to the so many shades of gray in all things important. Friends fall in love, fall out of love, parents love and lose just as easily and while no one has actually said, ‘all’s fair in love and war,’ it’s what I keep coming back to. The phrase I once rejected has come back with a sort of languid vengeance, spreading through our ranks.

And it’s not pretty. But, what is most disturbing is not that it’s back and it’s very real, but that I can’t even seem to work up a sense of outrage about it and neither can anyone else. Does this mean I believe that all’s fair in love and war? Did this happen without me even making a conscious decision to run with it? Maybe all my appalled outrage when I was younger was a symptom of denial—a denial of something that I subconsciously knew deep down was true.

I mean, what do we know about love? We know that love conquers all, that love will lead us, that love is worth dying for, that love is all we need. The world, ultimately, being Darwin’s world, would have us believe that love is survival of the fittest. And so it is. It’s not a death match, but it is an arena that doesn’t allow for spectators. You cannot sit this one out and let someone else have the glory because there is only one game. You have to push through your conscience and do what brings you peace and happiness. And I suppose, you just hope that when the smoke clears, people still love you.

Why on earth do we teach our kids this anyway? It took this kid 31 years to figure out that it’s not at all black and white, and that good people need to live their lives too. But I guess, there’s another shade of gray for you. You simply cannot tell a child it’s complicated. I know. I would have scoffed at that!