 london diary 12.04.02 London's Calling Lost in memories today I visited dear stellargirl’s site and reread some of the entries I had written for London diary. It is always strange to read your own words and especially strange to recount through snatches of musings the story of a year. It is that same measurement of time since I have written anything for this site and the same measurement of time that I spent in London before my very recent relocation to the United States. As I read my hesitant, early words I remembered those strange confusing emotions created by interaction with an unfamiliar world. Now, coming full circle- as life tends to go- I feel those same emotions again. But this time it is evoked by a place that I once called home. About a year ago I began a new life in a city that I had lived in for almost a year. My boyfriend moved back to Australia as I began graduate school and in precise unrecognizable instants everything changed. How to describe the stretching of self that occurred? My heart broke as my mind expanded and I can no longer distinguish one from the other. Does every burst of self-knowledge incur suffering? We call them growing pains, but really, they are great washes of emptiness, confusion and uncertainty. In the past year I made the kinds of friends that everyone has always dreamed of- supportive, intellectual, funny as hell, eccentric and seemingly adoring of me (the one generally precluding the other I have found!). I traveled to the east- two months in India- where I smelled, tasted and saw as if I were a newborn babe. I studied anthropology and watched, self-consciously amazed, as my mind attempted to conceptualize a new way of understanding the world. I grew into a city that is at once welcoming as it is stern, relaxed as it is hectic, and beautiful as it is worn. I found a true home amongst strangers and foreigners and on my twenty-fifth birthday awoke to the realization that I had changed. Everything was different, all of a sudden. The angst was gone, the child’s need to discover herself had relaxed. Now in its place was a kind of quiet self-confidence and wry outlook on the chaotic variables of life. I was suddenly comfortable with the fact that life was going to be hard, a struggle, and not always what I wanted it to be. But had I, on that day, fully appreciated that I might have to make the kind of incredibly painful choice that I envisioned adults (myself now included) to traverse with dignity and acceptance? For the second time, my visa was up. I had options, there are ALWAYS options, but not of the kind the law abiding generally take. And then, all of a sudden, there was my career to think of… And so it was gone, a city in which I had loved, lost and changed more than I thought I could- and my heart broke for the second time in a year. I was on a plane to Newark, via Pittsburgh. Homesickness is a funny thing, dear readers. It arrives in fits and spurts, waves of emotion that do not clearly state their intention. The mind struggles to remember the details of side streets as it ejects the most evocative moments of enjoyment out of self-protection. I miss London with every breath I take- its glorious, dirty, noisy, misty streets; its majestically lit building glowering into the Thames; each and every dreadful chain sandwich shop; parks with stretches of wet, emerald green unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere; the timbre of my friends’ laughter over the hum of smoky pubs-and the feel of my own stride as I hit the streets running- late for class, late for work, late for life. And now? Hell, I don’t know. But I am going to hold my head up high, cry those angsty tears in private and soon, with the baby steps of a stranger, tackle my new country – America. |
London's
Calling Livin', Lovin' and Wailin' On... Back in London May 15 April 2 March 5 January 16 January 2 December 27
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