living in the meantime

Every day in London (with the exception of yesterday, when I marched and attended a rally against government cuts with half-a-million other people (and which I wrote about at my new culture & politics blog.) begins the same way: without any set plans.

Maybe I drink my tea downstairs, watching BBC News, or maybe I bring my cereal upstairs to eat while I read Victoria Coren's memoir/yet another Angela Carter book/David Foster Wallace's essays. Maybe I'm tempted to stay like that all day, curled up in my pyjamas behind my locked bedroom door; I've always been rather lazy.

But I get up. I shower and dress. I head out into London. I look for work. I look for way to amuse myself while I'm not working.

On the days that the sadness doesn't stay away, I've found that the easiest way to cheer myself up is to head to a well-known tourist destination, and let the crowd swallow me up in its chatter and flow. Even after six months, there is still a thrill at seeing people take pictures of themself in front of Big Ben or Tower Bridge and being able to think I live here. As the song goes, London, you're a lady, and some days I don't know what I'd do without you.

I don't spend much time in museums and galleries right now. I think it's because they're too still, too enclosed; they're definitely too cut off from the beautiful weather London's been having. Instead I'm drawn to Hyde Park, to Portobello or Camden or Borough Markets, to the South Bank, to outdoor spaces fairly bursting with people as Spring hits the city and everyone rushes out from their homes and offices.

It feels a bit like living in the meantime right now. There are no special events, I'm not going to many shows. It's more of a slow, calm, settling-in for the long haul. It's something I'm okay wit. In a lot of ways, I'm more comfortable with myself than I have been in many years.

So I keep carrying on the day-to-day. I think about finally getting my next tattoo. I decide how I'm going to cut my hair. I paint my nails blue and my lips pink, and I contemplate the pros and cons of investing in a pair of floral Docs as the weather takes a turn for the better. I read books, in bed, in parks, on the Tube. I drink, as ever, too much tea. I write, I write, I write...

"Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings."
-Mary Oliver, "Starlings In Winter"