When I checked for my therapy consulting room keys this morning, they were not in my bag. I needed them for the afternoon, which meant I had to travel for over two hours - to get from my partner’s in south London, to mine in east, to my consulting room.
The city feels too big and frustrating when things like that happen. The idea that cities are built for convenience becomes farcical. Same for keys, really: convenient, farcical.
The Keys to the City.
What does this mean, again? Some kind of privilege. Google comes up with a map from a London locksmith, to the City of London - weird.
There is also a webpage about London’s equivalent, Freedom of the City, which I read, do not really get, and am not interested enough to research further: “The Freedom is open to all who are genuinely interested and invited or born to it.” Not for me, then.
In my fantasy, it means an urban life without inconvenience.
What would life be, without inconvenience? Inconvenience is not suffering, magnitude matters: losing your keys is inconvenient, not having keys because you do not have a home, is suffering. Even so, what is an inconvenience to one, might be suffering to another, and vice versa. Ongoing trauma might eradicate inconvenience; trauma’s aftermath might heighten sensitivity to inconvenience.
Is it sheer luck, to experience inconvenience, because it implies things are generally going smoothly? I think a life without inconvenience might be a life of suffering. What counts as a ‘nightmare day’?
I think of Gaza today - what passes for inconvenience now, does such a thing exist? I cannot grasp the magnitude of the suffering. Freedom of the City takes on new meaning.
