Archive for London
Many the miles.
I find myself oddly nostalgic about London right now. I knew it would hit me later than the rest, but I think I’m only just now starting to feel the pangs of desire to just sit on the underground and watch London pass by from several feet under.
This is strange for me only because I find myself fairly content with the present.
No- that’s a lie.
I never find myself content with the present. In fact, like most people, I trudge through most of my days looking ahead towards the next hour. And after that you’re just forced to keep trudging until the hours finally give way to the next day. Where you can resume trudging.
I hate trudging. I hate the word, the feeling it gives me, but it’s also the perfect image for what I’m feeling right now. I feel like each step is a little too mucky, a little to difficult to even bother. With every step the reality of the present gets a little bit closer, and suddenly you’re just stuck, in the now, and you’ve forgotten whichever way you were going in the first place. It’s at these moments, I’m forced to ask myself: “What the fuck?”
How do I get out this?
I don’t think London felt like trudging. At least with perspective filtered through fond memories, it’s hard to see it that way. I was having a lot of sex in London, and now I haven’t had sex in more than four months.
Sex never feels like trudging. God.
happy smiles and laughing yaks
an excerpt from a recent e-mail:
something tells me this is an epidemic.
I’m sitting comfortably in a rather english (if not mostly commercial coffee shop), sipping my macchiato and I feel an odd sense of emptiness that I can’t quite describe. No- it’s not emptiness exactly. It’s more like this vacuum of creativity has suddenly taken up residence in that part of my brain that houses all of my creative muscle. I can feel it withering up there. If I shook my head fast enough right now I almost feel like I would hear a pitiful kind of jangling noise where the most important kind of communications used to reside.
It’s like a void.
I think it’s an epidemic. Hopefully. Not hopeful really, just hoping that I’m not completely alone.
I haven’t been able to pick up a pen, pencil or dry erase marker to write for what seems like months now. Reading back through my last several journal entries everything has seemed fairly forced, and a little bit bland. It’s all I can do write now to try and make this interesting. But admitting to myself in the past couple of days that I have just come into contact with this huge creative road block has helped immensely in terms of remedying the problem. I’m writing now, aren’t I?
It’s scary though. To think that something that has always come so easily to me in the past is suddenly impossibly beyond my reach. I feel stagnant, and I honestly think it’s taking some kind of emotional toll on my psyche not being able to pour out anything- not a note, a rhyme, a sentence of any of the shit that’s been rolling around in my head since I’ve arrived in London. I keep asking myself what’s wrong, and keep trying to just muscle everything out, but it’s been painfully evident that none of that has worked. I’ve been journaling since I was eight, and I’ve been blogging for almost a decade now. Even when I haven’t been able to pull some juvenile poem out of my ass, whip up some fantastical tale or try my hand at theatrical fiction, I’ve always been able to make some kind of feeble attempt at making my daily life seem interesting. But not lately. I’m living in one of the largest and most multicultural cities in the world, just got back from a trip to Athens, and all I can seem to think about is how I can’t talk about any of it.
Maybe it’s all just a bit overwhelming. That seems a bit obvious, doesn’t it? But even if it is (or was, as the case may be) it’s not the least bit comforting. it’s not comforting or helpful to know that I’ve finally reached that point in my life when, faced with something completely untrivial, I can’t make write about it. I can’t reflect about it because it’s too big. Maybe that’s not what it’s about, but if it is I’m fucked. I’m fucked because I’ve built myself such an identity on being this budding writer. An author who sits in coffee shops and writes. Which is what I’m doing right now, sure- but if all I can do is write about life’s minutia, and not about the big stuff than that’s all my stuff will ever be. Small, tiny, unimportant. Pick up a thesaurus and keep going if you want. But any way I look at it, it only makes me feel more inept and incapable.
Life has been pretty happy the past couple of weeks. I’ve built up a nice routine, found a couple of good friends and did some amazing things, and it’s like I can’t write about anything but my own neuroses. I’m sure that’s probably been a pretty static feature of most of artists of the 20th century (and beyond), but it’s kind of gross, don’t you think?
I think ultimately what I’m just scared most days that life is getting too out of hand to write about. That I can’t really button down any one part that seems condensible enough to fit into this blog. And in the end none of it seems all that important. We’re in the midst of a huge financial crisis, a presidential election, and on the brink of world war if things don’t start to calm down over in Eastern Europe. What makes writing a play about a bunch of backpackers important anymore? What makes my stories interesting, vital, necessary? I’m sweating, thinking about all of this is stressing me out so much. I’m sitting in this coffee shop sweating, surrounded by a bunch of London scene kids in their hipster clothing and all I want to do is lock myself in my bathroom and never hear about anything important again. I want to feel like I’m building my life up to something that’s going to be world changing, and monumental and something that will make me feel alive. It’s all pretty grand when I read that over again to myself, but it’s how I feel. When I take all that out of it, All I’m doing is grasping at straws, and I might as well just jerk off all over the pages of my journal, because that’s what I’m going to create in the end.
And it’s all just so scary.
oviedo.
It all seems a bit odd to me still. Being here, in London. It’s been messing with my head a bit I fear. Even my internal monologue is a bit sketchy over here. It must have been damaged in the flight over, because I just can’t seem to find my voice.
My biggest hope was that I would travel here and that it would somehow inspire me to new heights of artistic brilliance. But so far all this pollution must have seeped into my brain and created some kind of creative tumor there. Even that last bit seemed a bit forced, didn’t it?
I suppose my biggest hope was that I would fall in love. Silly, right? Right. However, it just seems that if I was going to have a first real love, what better city or time to have one? Other than in Paris, during a period of my life when I wouldn’t be leaving in three month’s time. But if it were all to happen here, I wouldn’t disregard it because, honestly, it’s not like my success rate back in the states has been all that stellarl right? Maybe a bit of distance is what I really need. All I need.
Distance addles the brain I think. Judging from everyone else around here (myself included, read up above kids), all this distance (or maybe it’s the pollutants?) has caused a severe downshift in sanity. I’m thankful for my single room, and I’m thankful for my unbearable contentedness with being alone in the face of a new country. I think for the most part people just feel trapped. The group is their security blanket, but they’re steadily getting a little bit more restless with the same group to cling to. Where do you go in situations like that? I’m slowly garnering a new found understanding of those people in the Real World houses. Living with the same group of people, working and partying together isn’t exactly the best of times. It’s not always the worst either though.
They didn’t have to deal with two and a half years worth of emotional baggage either though. And to be perfectly, frustratingly honest, I think some of us might have exceeded the weight restrictions where that’s concerned.
You know how on the Real World when outsiders are introduced to the main cast of characters, for some strange reason people just don’t mesh well with the housemates. I kind of feel like that. While I pray a little prayer every day to find interesting London folk to take me under their wing and teach me their bizarre, European ways, I also fear that breaking away from the group may somehow be seen as some kind of great transgression against brotherhood, or sisterhood, or circle jerks- or something.
I always read in novels about “palpable tension.” I never understood what that really meant until I lived with hormonal, high maintenance, sensitive theatre majors. It’s a dish best served with lexipro and lots and lots of wine.
Take note, I don’t take myself out of that heath-ledger-inspired-cocktail equation either. We’re all stuck on this crazy ship, and I might as well stick a hat on my head, spit on my neck and call myself skipper.
I can feel the momentum building, and eventually I’ll get back to a place of peace and brilliance. But we can only hope.
where in the world did you find this boy’s head?
In a city as large as London, there shouldn’t be any question in anyone’s mind where you might find someone mildly interesting to talk to. A club, a pub, maybe even a bathhouse (if you’re into that sort of thing). So imagine my surprise today when I discovered that the secret to finding interesting company lay in a soap shop.
You heard me right. A soap shop. “Lush” in Covent Gardens to be exact. Now I didn’t exactly meet any lifelong friends today, or even my soulmate. But I did meet a handful of well dressed pirates come soap merchants.
Such is my life here in London. I wish I had several more interesting stories for you, but as of now the tale of Jay, the soap merchant, is one that isn’t quite complete. Did I immediately upon return home find him on facebook? yes. Am I fully planning on taking his invitation next week of coming back in the store to “buy more soap,” of course. But it has only been a short week and a half here in London town after all, I have to keep my horizons broad, and not put too much stock in a chance meeting at a soap shop. I mean, he had to talk to me for an hour and half, right? He was working there. However, I will give him this. The level of customer service I received today was unlike anything else I have ever experienced in London so far.
It’s strange how this house already has a very distinct, not altogether unpleasant smell. It’s one of those smells that I’m sure if I ever gleam the faintest wiff of it later on in my life, I’ll always remember it. And think back to Kilburn Park.
I’m starting to just get a tad bit homesick, but I’m praying that it will pass.
you’ll have my head like two birthday cakes
This morning I woke up in London. I set out on the tube, had class in a room called “Chaucer,” saw Big Ben, and shopped for groceries at a store where all the names were wrong.
I’ve had a pretty good two days so far, despite the jet lag and the stress of not knowing anything. But tonight, as I cleaned and organized our kitchen and tidied up the common room, I think I’ll adjust just fine to this place.
I would write something of more substance, but I’m not sure that this has all set in quite yet. Bare with me.
