Sometimes my work is dissonant

So I've been exchanging emails with a marketing coordinator for the United Nations High Comission for Refugees (UNHCR). Looks like I got the gig of doing some newsletter writing for them.

When you work for yourself, project to project, this kind of news is very good news indeed. Something that comes in once a month, reliably, and with a client that seems very systematic and clear about what she wants. Based in Europe, too, so she just sends a package of material, I work with it and send it back. Excellent regular incomce, and for a highly reputable and worthy organisation.

It's like "yay, I got the job". Then, the realisation, oh I'm writing about really terrible stuff. The first line of their last newsletter reads:

Thousands of people have fled across the Oubangui River to escape intertribal violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Equateur province.

Nasty, meaningless violence is the reason this organisation exists. Well that and floods, earthquake, poltical turmoil, etc. But mostly the kind of crap I've never even seen, let alone had any experience of. And because I can (mostly) string a sentence together, I can do something for them for some of the folding stuff. Sigh.

Oh well, the rest of my clients are trying to stop the world turning into Mars in about the same time as since the Doomsday book was written. I can suck it up and deal with the reports coming in from Sudan.

I often wish Lord Monckton and Ayn Rand were right you know. Charity is evil, no global warming. Then I could just work in advertising. I'd enjoy doing ads.

Things I see in the city

Today, when entering the Devonshire tunnel from Railway square, I saw a guy who was about 21 with a Guns and Roses tee-shirt where Axl Rose was mid-high-note and looked like a baby-faced angel with wax-like skin and an an ecstatic expression.

A few weeks ago on a sultry day, I saw a middle-aged woman stop on the main concourse of Town Hall station and put her face right up to the big industrial fan they had parked there. She shut her eyes, and was lost in a moment's relief from the overheated an suffocating underground air.

Then, I went out to George Street, where I watched a fancy car rev up to the lights. A bogan party girl was in the passenger seat and the driver was a middle-eastern beauty in a hijab, smoking a cigarette and playing the radio loud.

Later, I watched a young sk8tr girl zoom towards me on a down-hill section of Cleveland Street, crouching low on her board, doing slalem-moves while wearing a bowler hat and letting her fingers skim the ashphalt - apparently out of the sheer joy of a body in motion.

I wish I'd..

... strutted on the Central Park Runway at 1 am
... gone to Oslo that time
... worried less about getting travel sick on those trips
... asked that guy in that cab out for a drink
... been less apologetic in that meeting
... done more Karaoke before everyone had kids
... been a bit more demanding sometimes

Was reminded of a film quote the other day "When opportunity knocks - you don't wanna say Who is it?"