Green and Blacks

Currently I am in London and will most likely not return to London for sometime or maybe at all. Since this is the case, I am trying to make this a weekend full of touristy activities. All of my other weekend stays here in London have not really had any tourist type adventures built into the mix, although I certainly did try to do some things, they just never happened. Today I was able to go to many different places that I have been meaning to see. I went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Globe Theatre, and the Green and Blacks Chocolate Company corporate headquarters.

I have recently become addicted to Green and Blacks chocolate. They have a wide range and assortment of flavors when it comes to chocolate bars which have all been good or exceptionally good. I have become quite fond of their dark, white, and butterscotch bars. Tonight, I tried their Cherry bar for the first time. Cherry is Charlotte's favorite, but I cannot say that it is mine. That did not stop me from almost consuming the entire bar, however. Because of this obsession that is currently guiding my thoughts, I have been on a mission to try every flavor of chocolate this company makes. After looking at their UK website, I took notice that they have a caramel flavor that I have yet to try. I absolutely love caramel and since I have not found this flavor in any store in the UK I decided that I might as well go to their corporate headquarters which just so happens to be here in downtown London. I figured, if I was was to find this caramel bar anywhere, it must be at their headquarters. Alas, their corporate headquarters is just that--a corporate headquarters. Essentially it is just an office that they work out of and not a place to actually buy their products. Apparently the caramel is a discontinued line of chocolate and they do not distribute it to retailers any longer. The only way I can get my hands on one of these bars is to order it online. Pity.

Anyway, starting next week in Scotland, I will be traveling around the UK going where I please. A week from today I will be on a train heading up to Edinburgh. Once there, I will be taking a 5 day guided tour of the whole of Scotland. It is an area that I have always wanted to see and I am looking forward to it. I am not sure where I am going to go after my tour of Scotland. I may end up deciding that there are places and things in Scotland that I want to see more of, in which case I may end up hopping on a bus or train to get back to it. I will be traveling for at least three weeks. After that I may return to Jerry and Charlotte's house in Seaton, or I may continue my travels. I need to sit down and put some time and energy into trying to figure out some places that I really want to see, but that really does not sound like fun as most of my time lately has been on the computer helping Jerry with the development of his Neuropsychological Test and research into places to travel means more time on the computer. Just the other day, Jerry and I made it to an important milestone in the development of the test. There is still much to do though and I want to help as much as I can. This may be a project that I can work on even while I am traveling, although having Jerry there to oversee the things that I am working on is key, and would be difficult if we needed to collaborate long distance.

I have also been putting a lot of time into the development of my CV. If you have never heard of a CV (as I never had until I got here), it is essentially the worldly equivalent to an American Resume. In the hopes that I will be accepted to a school here in London, I have been developing my CV and looking into what I would need to do in order to obtain a Student VISA. If things go well, and I get accepted into the school that I have been looking at, then I will have to travel back to the US in order to apply for a Student VISA. I was hoping that I would be able to continue my time here in the UK and just get my VISA changed over, however, that does not seem to be possible. Hopefully soon, I will be invited down to the school for a week long introduction and by that time I will hopefully have a better idea when and if I will be coming back to the states. One plus about coming home is that I may be able to attend a couple of weddings that are happening this summer that I would otherwise not be able to attend. If I do end up getting accepted into this school I would start in late August or early September and the school goes until late July. I am keeping my fingers crossed that things work out. The more I read and learn about this school and its founder the more I want to go to it.

Trust

I feel like it has been a long time since I have written a blog about what is going on with me and my life--and by that I mean what is going on in my head. I have written blogs that have described what is happening, but I have not dipped into what I am thinking or how I am feeling. Abstract thought and deep interpersonal meaning. I am not quite sure why that is exactly. Perhaps it is because of the reading that I have been doing recently. The reading has sprung up a lot of thought and certainly a lot of feeling. For whatever reason, it seems that I am at a point in life where I am finally ready or maybe finally willing to release that which has been buried deep down for a long time. Confronting that which I have been afraid to deal with--and by that I mean feelings in general.

As males in this western society it is seen as a sign of strength and superiority if you have no outward signs of emotion. Perhaps this is showing that as a male you are master of yourself and your world which indicates to others around you how stable and safe you are. In reality, however, things are quite the opposite in most cases as it certainly is with me. The problem with suppressing emotions is that they always seem to come out in different forms. Sickness, depression, anger and sadness; oddly enough the two latter are both emotions.

We are born into a man-made society and we spend a lot of time and energy learning to conform to that society which we have built for ourselves. We must learn to fit in and to assimilate into what is considered normal at any given time. I feel that this may be one of the reasons that I hated school so much growing up. School, as I have experienced it, is not much more then the methodical training of conformity to societal norms. Get a job, make money, buy a house, have a family, buy more things...lots of things (the larger the better; the more expensive the better). This is what we are taught to believe is what we want out of life in this western civilization. I do not know what job I want, having money means nothing, a house would be nice, but is worthless without other people you love in it and I am much to young for a family. What then do I do? What does one do when one comes to the conclusion that our society is concentrating on the wrong things in life?

As a whole we have become disconnected with that which matters most. We have become a mass of routines. We each have our own routine and we rarely stray very far away from it. When something or someone breaks our routine we become uncomfortable and uneasy. This is why we can watch the world crumble around us but until it starts effecting the price we pay at the gas pump do we take any notice. The news has become a form of entertainment rather then a medium that spreads the free flow of information. We come to care about cancer research and development once someone around us that we know and love contracts it. The cancer is not the real problem though--merely a symptom. One symptom out of thousands that are perpetually growing more and more serious. Only when we break our comfortable routines and step outside ourselves will we be able to see that in reality we are all just people not divided by the things that make us different, but united by that which we have in common. We all want to live a happy and meaningful life. We all want our children to live in a world where they have nothing to fear. Fear divides while trust unites. We must all trust one another.

Without trust I cannot respect you. Without respect I cannot love you.

England Pictures

I have posted some new pictures covering a number of different places I have been in the last couple of weeks.

England