February 2012
My mother told me that next to dealing with death, the physical act of moving somewhere can be the most traumatic event for an individual to endure.
I have lived in London for about five months now and I can tell you, without a doubt in my mind, that I have never felt so completely unglued in my life. Now, my life has been relatively short—I’m only 26—but what occurred to me just before I sat down to write this letter was that all the countries I have previously traveled to were dots on a map that I have been fortunate enough to start connecting in my own random way. Yet still, however many countries I name . . . India, Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa . . . they remain destinations, just points of interest in my brief biography. Sure, the lessons I learned while traveling the world cannot be confined to an essay, but moving somewhere to live is not something any amount of travel could have taught me how to deal with.
I know what you’re thinking, because I’m thinking it too. How does moving to London, just another cosmopolitan city, even begin to compare to dealing with third world diseases, foreign languages, foreign food, foreign people, foreign everything? The answer is that it doesn’t, not really. It is a different world, here. There are so many geese. I mean, the Queen has dubbed the goose as royal so they really are everywhere. It’s a fight to the death between Her Majesty’s bloody geese and me when I decide to go for a run in Regent’s Park and there they are, waddling around, because death is upon you if you try to mess with anything royal. This place is what the British call mental. But, I digress.
After almost missing my flight from New York to London (waking up at 7:45 am for a 9:30 am flight is not ideal and very much against Aires Family Airport Policy), I should have known that what seemed like an uneven start was just the tip of the iceberg for me. The running joke between Americans who move to England and Englishmen who have lived in America is that the only thing we have in common is our language, and even that’s a stretch.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand what happened when I attempted to open a UK Bank account. The dialogue will speak for itself:
“ Hello, I’d like to open a bank account please. Do you have any appointments available today?”
“ Yes.”
“ Brilliant. Can I have one, please?”
“ No.”
“ Why not?”
“ We don’t do same-day appointments.”
“ But you have appointments available?”
“ Yes.”
“ But I can’t have one?”
“ No.”
“ Who will be lucky enough to get one of these available appointments then?”
Blank stare. I walked out.
Everything that has anything to do with what I’ve termed English Logistical Rubbish has a strikingly similar dialogue. My all time favorite episode was when the University librarian asked me if I had corroboration when the printer I was using had a mental breakdown and shot out over 200 pages of illegible print, costing me a significant sum of money. All I wanted was a refund. After explaining the situation multiple times so that he knew I was not lying in order to weasel money out of Goldsmiths and going further to make sure he understood that, unfortunately, the printer could not corroborate my story because the printer could not speak, he finally retorted with, “ The thing is . . . here, in London . . .things don’t happen . . . right away.” I took a deep breath, stared right between his eyes and said politely, but with force, “ No shit.”
I left for London with a number of things on my mind. I don’t think it could have been any other way. In the months preceding my imminent departure, I tested my limits on family and on love. After a few years of wavering on the issue, I decided to seek help from a therapist in order to properly deal with issues I had never been able to fully resolve on my own. I gave in last summer. I found the confidence to deal with old friends. I found the security to believe in new friends and in the last few weeks before I left, I found enough of something to have a relationship with one of the sweetest men I have ever known. It is easier now to acknowledge that he wasn’t right for me, but at that moment in time, he was pretty close to something really great. Girls often talk about guys being perfect on paper and that was him. I suppose the fact that I was leaving allowed me to forgo the emotions I wanted to feel but didn’t. I wanted young love—the kind without responsibility. I wanted bubbles and butterflies. But my mind was in London while my heart was somewhere else completely. About five months later and it doesn’t seem so crazy that upon arrival, I was a hot mess.
The concept of permanence hasn’t totally hit home, not yet at least. I arrived three days before classes started and somewhat foolishly convinced myself that there would be more than enough time to settle in. I laugh and shake my head now thinking about the way I ran around in those first few weeks, like a chicken with its head cut off, searching for things like the perfect laundry bag which I’ve since thrown out. I wanted so badly to feel the way I had in those last few years in New York. I missed my old apartment and my old neighborhood, of course forgetting that they weren’t perfect, not even close. My old apartment, while uniquely fabulous, came with a slew of issues like little animal friends, faulty bathroom ceilings and no fire escape except through the front door. The latter not really being a massive issue unless my kitchen, the closest room to my front door, decided to blow up in flames. It was so hard for me to remember that my life before London wasn’t exactly the slice of pie I prefer to remember it as. I was so desperate to feel at home that I refused to even entertain the idea of what good fortunes would come my way with a little bit of time and its close friend, patience.
In the beginning, when I was still struggling with the blue carpet and bright, fuzzy orange chair that came with my flat, two new friends turned Tuesdays into the best part of my week. The way we met was perfectly simple, but seemingly indicative of our respective personalities. It was International Orientation at Goldsmiths, a day before the first day of the next chapter of our lives would begin.
Blair was just a few steps ahead of me as we approached the New Academic Building together. He held open the door for me, and I suppose that my traveler’s mind saw an opportunity for friendship, at the very least someone to converse with over first day jitters. I thanked him for playing doorman and asked him where he was from. After he told me that he was from Toronto, he returned the question. With a smile on my face, I said I was from California and out of nowhere, like an apparition, Tanya appeared and said, “ California?” It was a done deal after that. We’ve since termed ourselves The Three Musketeers, spending almost every Tuesday night wreaking havoc around London. In joking about our group nickname, Tanya likes to say that the term suits us well. We are, after all, just as sweet as the candy bar, just as shiny as the silver wrapper and just as needed after a long day. I don’t know why we clicked so easily or why it seems like we have known each other for far longer than four months, but I’m done trying to find a reason. We just work.
Academically speaking, I had absolutely no idea what I was in for. Sure, friends told me that Graduate School would be tough but when I showed up on the first day of class and found out that I would be giving a presentation three days later, I laughed in shock and cried a river on the inside. It was hit the ground running or die a terribly slow and painful death. I chose this program, a Master of Fine Arts in Curating, because it combines my most ardent passions—art, writing, and critical thinking—into one very unstructured, two-year full time course.
We are seventeen students who spend four days a week discussing the dynamic relationship between art, artists, curators and viewers. We use everything we know to question everything we thought we already knew. But to be fair, questioning everything all the time is bloody exhausting. I used to embrace not knowing. Even more, I advocated it. I loved the idea of not knowing, the inherent surprise of it all. And especially when I spent last year traveling, I fell in love with simply going through the motions. But now, not knowing freaks the shit out of me. I suppose it’s simple when I begin to break it down: the more I question everything around me, the less attached I feel to anything and lately, I can’t seem to find the ground beneath my feet. It’s ironic that I seem to have found the perfect course of study where I’m allowed, encouraged in fact, to never stop asking why. But some days I’d rather just live in the land of ignorance and bliss.
It’s true that for years I denied being what my mother termed so serious. I love to learn. I always have. I speak about the world of academia like it’s a privilege and that at the core, you either love to learn or you don’t. But somewhere in there, in between loving to learn and loving life, exists an ability to simultaneously think and let go. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to actually detach myself from my frenetically paced thoughts in that way but I do know that when I feel like I’ve hit a brick wall, there’s a great pub with Guinness on tap just down the street. It’s there, at the local pub near my studio, where I find some time to slow down, rest my brain, have a laugh with friends and remind myself not to be so serious.
After finishing one term and just a few weeks into the next, it seems that the constant list of things to do is what makes surviving seem almost impossible. I joke that the difference between the 2nd term and the 1st is that in the beginning, I was drowning and now I have floaters but they’re very low on air. In short, I feel as if I am always “ON.” I don’t know how to switch my brain off anymore. Like my first few years in New York, I spent last term burning the candle at both ends because as a new resident, I didn’t want to miss a beat and as a new student, I didn’t want to fall behind.
I celebrated my four-week anniversary in London with a weekend of concerts and dance parties. To top it off, I visited a family friend’s allotment, which provided a great reprieve from the ever-incessant bread and baked beans diet I’d been enjoying, say, every other night up until that point. And then, after I’d seen a friend who I’d met whilst traveling last year, I fell victim to a brilliant conman’s ploy who pretended to be pissed drunk at the local pub and walked off with my backpack instead. People around me said my immediate hysteria sounded like I was screaming bloody murder. I lost a great deal that night and it took a while to shake that horrible feeling of being completely violated and wanting to bathe in a tub of Dettol on a daily basis.
Since those days of deep-seated insecurities and a constant unrivaled fear that maybe I would feel more secure about my intelligence, my artistic practice . . . (the list goes on) if I hadn’t moved so far away, I’ve managed to find a bit of a routine. My Granny Bern suggested it would take about six weeks, but I suppose hanging out in the womb for two weeks past my due date should have signaled that I would indeed need a bit more time to settle in. Like all good yoginis, I’ve found a wonderfully wholesome studio close to home. It’s a sanctuary of sorts where rooms labeled Earth, Sky and Forest create a break from the every day in order to slow down, calm down and just breathe.
London is tiny. It is a strange place where the circular nature of the Tube makes everything a bit less immediate than one would think. I’ve become an avid bus rider and an equally avid cyclist. Her name is Betty and she’s perfectly contrasted with a black frame, white handlebars and strawberry red pedals for a necessary bit of funk. Like anything to do with movement, cycling creates a new way of being. I love who I become when I am on my bike. In a very episodic way, cycling is a chance to experience another version of myself.
Visitors have come and gone. My lovely mother arrived just in time to rescue me from post-traumatic-theft-stress. We strolled the streets of London together just as the leaves were turning and a slight chill started to fill the air. We ate salt beef bagels, walked the South Bank, read newspapers on Hampstead Heath and hunkered down with a cone full of chips covered from top to bottom in salt and vinegar. We laughed and cried and yelled and screamed. My mother likes to flatter my intelligence and tell me that she learns so much when I babble away about some abstract fact I remember from the 7th Grade, but as we walked through London she was the one telling the stories. I learned about the Soap Box Corner in Hyde Park, and the famous cigarette adds which still lurk around Tube stations reminding passengers that when they tire of anything to do with London, they tire of life.
The thing about having visitors is that in the end, they always leave. And for whatever reason, which I still haven’t been able to pin point, soon after they’ve gone it’s like they were never there. It sounds so awful and I don’t mean any disrespect but by the time my mother and then my middle brother, Jon, had left me I felt like I just wasn’t equipped to start again. But that’s when patience kicks in and rears its pretty little head. Patience reminds me that I’m capable, that I was surviving before my guests arrived and I will keep surviving after they’ve gone. It is patience that tells me to take a deep breath and just keep going.