By Covent Garden

I’m living bliss. No more crossing off of articles on lists, thank you.

Thank you because I am in _____, and one must behave. I haven’t always behaved.

The first time I misbehaved must have been when I was nine, living in _____. A boy in our class had revealed that his father kept quarter coins in a jar by his bed. Then he invited a group of classmates over. Then those classmates, on an umpteenth break in, got me aboard. We spent his father’s money on an arcade game we played to our hearts' content.

It was wrong. Some time before that happened I’d run down the hall of my building to see _____, my neighborhood friend. His mother bought him a toy every day she went to work. It was not why _____ and I were friends, but wow. His mother had opened the door, you cannot see _____ anymore. You are a bad influence, she said.

Years later I misbehaved in law school. The first semester had gone well. As expected. I learned easily. My schoolbag usually carried gym clothes. You should always have a bag at school. Without one you are out of place. The second semester I drank, danced, emptied fire extinguishers in your car, should you have been the person who left your car unlocked in a university lot overnight. The fourth semester I interviewed. Once I had been seen, I danced, in the interview cocktail room, which was bad.

Things happen in life. They are neither bad nor good, just things. I moved to _____. To study _____. Which is close to money.

_____ is great. So many people, from everywhere. Different ways but all still the same. Not a great place for leaves, so not the best place for color, but good for people. And if you’re going to make money with color Europe works.

Making money is ridiculously simple. So the last place one should seek salvation is money (do you need to go to school for that?).

Side note: Being nice in _____ is tricky. People are tough on others with a smile here.

So I’d made money. Bla, bla, bla.

I’d become Green in a sea of blue: uniform navy blue of work districts. Blue is serious. The _____ man who walked into my office wasn’t, do not change things, he said, it is impossible. One does not bite the hand that feeds, said another. Before the Holidays, longest night of the North, I was done. I’d opened a door - you don’t need to go to school for that.

Money had come, not to me. I’d have to partake if I took, nor was it necessarily created (I don’t know how money is created; it’s printed, but _____ know how). But it moved to people I worked with (or for, if you like; I work with) and that is also how money works.

The end of the line is neither bitter nor sweet, just the end of a line.

Was I bad? Well it got me here, to bliss, in a successful, so not-unusually-friendly, pub, surrounded by ladies in the Holiday spirit, short of a sharpener and my pencil duller.