Entries about migration experiences

It’s been over a year since I wrote my last blog entry. I wrote it just before the year turned to 2013, in the wake of my father’s death. When I wrote it, it felt like an ending.

The title of this blog is based on the haunting song by Brian Eno called An Ending (Ascent), written for a movie about the Apollo space program. You can hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It4WxQ6dnn0. The song came into my head as I finished my last entry.

I originally started writing a blog when I started travelling more, both for work and for pleasure. I had lots of different thoughts about what the blog would be over the years, even at points wondering if it might not be the start of new career as a travel writer.

Ultimately, though, the blog was my motivation to live a more interesting life. It made me more adventurous. As I have gotten older, I have found myself becoming more introverted. When travelling, especially for work, if left to my own devices, I would probably be happy just staying in my hotel room and watching TV.

Knowing that I had a blog, and should write an entry about the place I am in, it forced me to get out and experience something. I never regretted getting out and doing stuff once I was out, but often would suffer from a lack of motivation to get started. The blog, and knowing I needed an entry, provided that initial push to get out and do something.

In the past few years, though, things have changed. I no longer live the nomadic life of a consultant, and instead am trying to settle into a new life in a new country. When I first moved to the UK in 2008, the blog was still an inspiration and motivation to get out and do things - make new friends, immerse myself in a new life, explore the interesting parts of my new city.

After living in London for a few years, I decided that I would make a life for myself here. No longer did I need motivation to get out and experience London as a tourist. I needed not a breadth of experiences, but to dive deep into a specific life.

I realised, though, that the blog was holding me back. I was going out observing life, taking some pictures of it, and then writing about it in the blog. I felt like the blog was giving me an excuse to stand on the sidelines, when what I really needed was to get into the melee.

I thus made a resolution to not blog for a year, and instead to use my energy to immerse myself in my London life. To do things not because they would make a great blog entry, but rather because it would give me a deeper connection to my life in London.

While the blog has been quiet, I have been busy. I got my permanent residency for the UK. I moved to a nicer house to a more interesting neighbourhood. I gardened and BBQ’d and had people over. I left my job to take some time off. I have taken a wine course, and driving lessons, and met people who share interests of mine like formula one, sailing and skiing to gain some new friends. I did some online dating for a bit, and may pick it up again in the new year.

Best of all, I’ve still kept going out, experiencing things. After ten years of the blog acting as my motivation, the habit of getting out has become so ingrained I don’t need the blog as a crutch anymore. Further, as I am not experiencing things as an observer thinking of how to write about it, I am meeting more people and getting more involved in the experiences.

So with that I am ending the Esoteric Globe, with the final chapter being about how my father inspired me to live a brave life, and this epilogue telling you how it is coming along one year on.

I may pick up blogging again in the future if I feel the need arises, but will start fresh in a new blog. I am still writing, though in only 140 characters, on Twitter, where I also post some pictures now and again, if you really cannot do without my musings.

Thank you all for reading and commenting over the years. I hope I was entertaining, and perhaps provided some inspiration for you all to travel. Writing for you has inspired me to have a more interesting life, and as I move forward I will continue to do the same.

To live a brave life.

Stealing, as I do, posts from my facebook page...

Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend. So in the spirit - along with turkey sausages for dinner this evening - stuff I am thankful for...

• my iPod;
• people who don't point out my grammatical errors;
• Ninkasi;
• life's constant reminders that I am human so I don't develop hubris;
• the opportunity to live abroad;
• family and friends back home who love and accept me, even though I am far away;
• friends here in the UK who accept me, even though they have to live close to me;
• Teressa Bellissimo for inventing the Buffalo wing;
• my general good health;
• the fact that those of my family who have suffered ill health this year have gotten better;
• and a good gin Martini.

As the day wore one - and I had consumed my Turkey sausages, I called my family back in Toronto. I spoke to the family back in Toronto as the clock turned over to 11 PM here in the UK. They were sitting down for Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings. I hung up the phone, knowing they would soon be on to pumpkin pie.

So to you all reading this, regardless of the day or your nationality, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Early October may be the Thanksgiving day for Canada, but we should be aware of what we need to give thanks for every day.

Look up, this is the world you live in. It may be harsh and hard at times, but it can also be beautiful. It gives so many gifts, even when at the time they seem like blows to your chest. Hard lives are hard won.

Thankful for everything that has happened - the good, the bad and the ugly. If it hadn't of happened, I'd be a different man, in a different place, in a different set of circumstances. Maybe it would have been better, maybe it would have been worse. But it wouldn't have been me.

Night fall covers me, but you know the plans I'm making. Still overseas, could it be the whole world opening wide?
- View to a Kill, Duran Duran

It has been a busy few weekends past. First was my trip to the Paralympics, and then, with a friend from Canada in town, two weekends of day trips to Hampton Court Palace, Brighton, Canterbury and... um, this is a little embarrassing... The Harry Potter Studio tour. Actually, Harry Potter was surprisingly good, even though I haven’t read any of the books and only seen the first of the films.

Award winning beach, Brighton

Rose Garden, Hampton Court Palace

Canterbury Cathedral at Night

Dumbledore's office on the Harry Potter Studio Tour

Given all this activity, I decided to take it easy this weekend. I slept in, did some laundry and as a final activity got my haircut. I planned to grab some take-out chicken from Nando’s and head home for a Saturday night in.

My haircut finished up about 16:30, so a little early for dinner. Instead, I popped into a local pub to catch the end of the Saturday Premier League football. I had a couple of pints, watched the football scores come in and surfed the internet on my phone.

18:00 rolled around, so I decided to head home. Wandering out of the pub, a thought flashed into my mind. “I am enjoying visiting this country,” I thought, “I will miss it when I go home.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait a second,” I thought. “I am not a visitor here. I live here, just around the corner.”

It’s not the first time I have caught myself thinking like that. Thinking that this is just a temporary situation - a holiday away or a longer-term business trip. I still, after four years living here, sometimes find myself surprised at the fact that I really am living abroad.

The truth is, I don’t really feel like I am British. Certainly, legally I am not - not at least for another couple of years.

However, at some point I would have thought I would start to feel like I belong here.

This isn’t an externally driven feeling. The people of London who I know have never made me feel like I wasn’t welcome. I feel accepted here. I feel like I have a life here. I feel like people are happy to have me here.

But I don’t feel natural here. I don’t feel far outside, but I do feel like an outsider, just always outside of the circle of those who have lived in the UK all their lives.

I wonder if that ever goes away?

Without a way to connect my iPod to the rental car’s radio, I was forced to listen to the local radio. I tuned the radio to a classic 80s station. Wave Babies by Honeymoon Suite came on the radio as I made the turn off from the Queen Elizabeth Way (Niagara bound) to North Shore Boulevard.

If I hadn’t caught a glimpse of my receding hairline and grey-haired temples in the rear-view mirror, I could have sworn it was 1988 again, my teenaged years spent in this same town, driving these same streets and listening to this same music.

But, as Honeymoon Suite sung, just like summer, it is over too fast...

= = =

I flew back to Canada to visit with my family, and take care of some personal business. I stayed in the town where I grew up, Burlington, which is about one hour outside of central Toronto.

Despite only having left Canada 4 years ago and having been back a few times since, I hadn’t spent much time in Burlington since I moved away 15 years ago (originally to Toronto, and then to London). I had spent a few days, and the occasional overnight, but mostly had focused my Canada life on Toronto.

On this trip I spent 7 days and nights in Burlington, the longest I had been there in a very long time.

It was all so familiar, but at the same time, very different.

I ended up feeling like a tourist in the town I grew up in. A stranger in a familiar land.

It was partially the physical changes to the town - new buildings erected, old buildings torn down, new roads build. The constant turning of a corner and being surprised by what was there.

That was only a small part, though. When I lived in Burlington, I knew a lot of people. This was, of course, because when you are a teenager you know so many people in your local area. Everyone in your school and the place you work are likely from the area, so you have a wide social circle.

Now, though, I knew no one. In seven days, I didn’t see a single person I knew by chance. Even though I walked through the malls and the parks and ate in the restaurants of the town, I didn’t happen upon a single person who I knew without pre-arranging a meeting.

Mostly, though, the feeling was driven by the changes in the life of myself and my family. When I last lived here, my parents were both alive and lived in a house on a leafy street. I returned to a place where I have just a single parent, and he is going through the process of moving from his modern, waterfront condominium to a care home. My family is in the process of moving from having parents as caregivers to giving care to our parent.

When I say I was a stranger in a familiar land, there is a double meaning.

Not just familiar because I knew Burlington from my past, but also familiar in the sense "of my family." I am in the place where my family lives, but much changed since I lived here.

New places, new configurations, new structures. Physical, emotional and mental.

All change. Same place, but different.

I am local, and I am the foreigner.

“You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.” - Heraclitus of Ephesus, c. 535 – c. 475 BCE.

When I first arrived in London, I got lost.

London's street layout has not changed much since the medieval era. They twist and turn, and there are many narrow little walkways and alleys to go down. I'd start out walking down a street, thinking I am heading east, and wind up heading off to the north, coming out somewhere completely unexpected.

Narrow London

Traffic in Islington on the Cally Road

Now getting lost in a new city is good fun, but if you are trying to make a life there, and get to appointments like job interviews or medical appointments, trying to find your way through the new streets in the quickest and fastest way possible without getting lost becomes important.

"I need a map," I said to myself.

I went into a local shop and said I wanted a map of London.

"Do you want a map, or an A to Z?" the clerk asked.

I had no idea what he was taking about. "A map," I replied.

"We only have A to Zs," he said.

I shrugged and walked out. It was only later the same day when I was in another book store, looking up at the London section, that I realized what an A to Z was.

Little and Big A to Zs

The A to Z (or in its written form, AZ) is a street atlas, in a booklet form. Back home in Toronto, we would have just called it a map, but here it goes by the name AZ.

AZ (that's A to Zed, my American friends) was a creation of the AZ map company, designed by Phyllis Pearsall. Back in the 1930s, Phyllis walked London street by street to create the first AZ, and named the map after the index at the back, an alphabetic list of every street in the capital. It, of course, seems completely and totally logical that something like this should exist, but back then it was a revolution.

The AZ took off, so much so that the description "A to Z" has come to mean any booklet form map. I own two AZs, though they are actually Philip's Street Atlases. I have a pocket sized one that I could carry around with me when I was out on the streets, and a larger one that sits at home on a shelf to be consulted in the comfort of my abode.

I used to carry the mini one around with me constantly, and would often consult it. Unlike in Toronto (whose streets are an understandable and easily navigated grid), where someone with a map out would be pegged as a tourist immediately, here in London the long time Londoner would take no shame in pulling out their AZ. All those windy streets, changing names every mile, with lots of little streets off them that run for only a few hundred yards. No one could really know it all (except the cab drivers, who must obtain "The Knowledge" (an understanding of where every street in London is) before being allowed behind the wheel of a black cab).

London's Twisty Streets

The AZ is such an institution, it inspires its fans. James May is a fan, as is Ham over at the London Daily Photo. The iconic east London blogger, The Diamond Geezer, has a whole series of A to Z posts, looking at the museums in the capital.

But the AZ is slowly disappearing. I stopped carrying my mini one around, and very rarely pull out the big one at home. It's been replaced, at home by the endlessly fascinating Google Maps, and out on the streets...

The New Maps

..the smart phone with GPS enabled. No longer do I pull out my AZ and then go through the process of staring at the street signs trying to place myself in the map. Instead, I pull out my phone, click on the "map" app, and wait while it "locates satellites." (Has it ever thought of looking up? The sky is full of them.)

The physical AZ still does have a soft spot in my heart, even if it doesn't have a place in my pocket when I head out into the streets of London. Getting my first one, and pouring over it trying to learn my new city will always be a key part of my becoming a Londoner.