Life plans that go awry

Flowers, Paris (c. Laura Harrison McBride, 2013)

This morning at breakfast, my husband and I began talking about life plans. Well, my life plans anyway. His life plan has never waivered; he wanted to work in electronics, went to school courtesy of Cable & Wireless, worked for them in Yemen and the Gambia, saw the writing on the wall, became a telecoms engineer/programmer...and still is, a few decades and a couple of continents later.

I, on the other hand, wanted to be an actress. Then I wanted to be a novelist. Then I wanted to be a writer. Then I wanted to be a psychologist. Then I wanted to be a linguist. Then I wanted to be a journalist. Then I wanted to be an artist again. Then I wanted to be an interior designer. Oops....back to artist. Then I wanted to own an advertising agency (did that.) Then I wanted to train horses (did that). Then I wanted to keep being a writer and be an artist...and move first to Paris and, when I began to become feeble, move to Ireland to die.

Lucid dreaming

As it happens, I married a Brit, moved to Cornwall, and continued on as a writer and artist. All the other desires are happily of blessed memory. Sort of. Things you've wanted to be and things that you actually did remain a part of you. For example, imagine my shock when, in my 40s, I did some lucid dreaming asking for what to do next; I was then a freelance journalist and learning to train horses. The answer that came to me in the night: Work in theatre.

"WHAT!  Come ON. Are you kidding? Do you know how OLD I am?" I asked the provider of answers all these questions and got no reply. But I for sure was not going to up sticks, move to New York and hope to go on casting calls, despite my undergraduate degree that was split between English Lit. and Theatre.

So I figured lucid dreaming didn't work. But then, ta da, I got a call from the editor of a newspaper who wanted a theatre reviewer. No kidding! So I talked with the man, wrote a sample review, and got hired. I stayed three years, a longevity record for me as an employee; it was the best gig I've ever had. (PS, that man is still a great editor, now in Johnson City, Tennessee, USA.)

Getting psychedelic over pizza?

I've never lost my love for Paris. Well, not exactly. Of all my travels (not that there are so many), I have had both the best and worst in Paris. The worst is the most recent. My own fault: NEVER go to Paris during Christmas week. Still, I hunger for the beauty of Paris, the street scenes so imbued with the loveliness of life--even on an ordinary street such as the one in the painting above--that Paris remains the apotheosis of all things wonderful, regardless of what small miseries one might have experienced there.

My life plan at the moment doesn't include a trip to Paris immediately. I've sort of been entranced by the descriptions of Neapolitan pizza in Eat Pray Love, and my stomach may insist on a return to Italy...maybe Rome and Naples, just as in Eat Pray Love.

I don't think I'll go on to India, though. But then...life plans have a habit of changing, I do love Indian food, I have a personal guru (Hi, Arthur!), and I studied the anthropology of India at university. That course was taught by Allan D. Coult, a colleague of Timothy Leary of LSD fame. (When I looked him up, I found he died only a couple of years after I took his course, and he really wasn't very old.) The course wasn't so much about India, really, as about Coult's beliefs about the interplay between what one eats and what one is. But I digress....

Oh. Well, actually, I'm finished. And dinner needs to be made, dog needs to be fed, cat needs to be located and locked in for the night....