The annual return of a love long gone

my photograph - london 28 july 2010

It's a love long gone, lost in the passing of time and space.

Lost more thoroughly with each farewell. 

It was a love borne of summer winds and hair damp and fragrant with chlorine pool water or else matted with the brown, murky expanses of still lakes.

It was a love borne of star-filled nights and shallow breathing.

It's a love long passed into shadows, but with each year as the world begins to warm your breath comes back to me on the soft summer sun. 

With each gentle breeze, phantom arms wrap around me.

The increasing warmth of every passing day contradicts the growing coldness of your heart until the friction sets my heart ablaze.

My inexperienced hands sent your car slowly, lurching up hills until you took the steering wheel and I sat in the passenger side, my heart fluttering in desperation.

Sweating in the concave backs of my knees and on the nape of my neck.

Summer heat sent my boiling heart into overdrive.

The novelty of familiarity

Things keep falling through the cracks, slipping through my grasp. 

With every second ticking by, that which seemed concrete fades to hazy shades of grey.

My mind decides to move on, but what would happen if I stayed.

I've spent my life running away, I wonder what awaits me in the still, cool silences.

Life has given me every reason to flee and drop it all again before it burns me deeper still. 

The darkness that surrounds me builds walls higher with each brick.

Isolation mirrors back to me my own desperation. 

Escape is easy through the back door. 

Fleeing cruelty and fleeing familiarity.

But what if I refused to give up. 

What if I torn down those walls, brick by brick. 

Leaving sounds so appealing, yet staying promises equal mysteries and even more possibilites.

As spring peeks it's way above ground and the wind whispers of new life, I wonder if I will let this town become a familiar town, a home-town, at last.

all my photographs from Regents Park in London

The mini battenberg cakes of life

Lately life has felt ominously dark and imposing. It's felt empty and still, overcrowded and claustrophobic. I've blinked back tears and shut bathroom stalls behind me as my eyes overflow and I lean back against the cool plastic, trying to calm my heart. I've grasped foolishly to small possibilities only to watch them crumble in my grip.

Regents Park (my photo)

But then I've sank to the floor and sat with my head in my arms and I've felt a hand on my back. Phones have lit up and someone said something silly and I smiled in the dark, sitting on a park bench staring up at where the stars are hiding from my view, too shy to wink down at me amidst the glaring street lights. That song has come on shuffle and my step has lightened. Jim Dale's voice has quickened my heart as he introduced me to the world of magic, again - and I felt 11. 

At work when I want to scream he talked off pistachios instead and his eyes met mine and didn't blink. Pistachio gelato, in Italy. We agreed on that. And he told me to enjoy life and I didn't know what to say. He told me to buy a brattenberg cake and take a first bite. And I felt he was right but how could I do it all. I looked at him. He said it simply yet my heart felt I was facing a mountain range.

But then there it was. Milky tea, just the way I like it. (He even took the teabag out.) There it was. A mini brattenberg cake placed just in the middle of a saucer. And I turned to meet his eyes but he wouldn't meet mine. I couldn't find words but my heart was singing and I wished he could here the melody. This was a rough man showing me he had a softness in his heart. This was a course man showing me he noticed the finer things in life. This was a man who hid his heart and I had just caught a glimpse and I wished he wouldn't insist on hiding. And I wished hearts wouldn't insist on hiding their best parts.

There was no love. There was no undying affection or passionate promises made on crossed hearts. There was a shrouded heart that showed a flicker of life.

Phases

I've realised today that I am a woman of phases. I am presently in a marmite, rice cracker and cheese phase. I am in a hair-pulled-back and clipped back with hair grips phase. I'm in a phase of rainy-day walks. I'm in my skinny trouser and boots phase. I've no nail polish and no make up. I'm in an Ingrid Michaelson and Joni Mitchell phase. I'm in a tea and chocolate phase. I'm in a blogging phase.

But a couple weeks back I was in the middle of an entirely different phase. I was in an eating hummus and veggies phase. I listened to happy music. I was in a phase of black dresses and black tights and cat-eyes and glittery nails. I was in the midst of a reading/writing phase that couldn't quench my thirst for words. 

When the snow was falling I was blue and I listened to Laura Marling on repeat. I wore woolly tights and ate 6 clementines a day. I kept my fringe down, falling into my right eye and hiding my face. That was a phase of cold noses and flushed cheeks and smiling at strangers when their eyes smiled at me. I was in a phase of wanting nature and soft hugs that didn't let me go.

When I read Virginia Woolf I go into a phase of long, stretched-on days in bed. I get into a heavy eye-lids phase and an aching body phase. I enter a phase of tea and jumpers and searching.

E.M. Forster sends my imagination running. He plunges me into a phase of floor length dresses and maps of Italy. Phases of romantic dreaming and the courage to fly.

Sophia Coppola has a way of engulfing me in phases of colours. I see in shades of blue and grey and pink and green and white. She makes my sight glaze over and sends me into phases of the mind that leave me laying on the floor with eyes wide open staring into the universe. I have phases of heart ache and heart flutters that I cannot make head or tale of.

I am a woman of phases. I am a woman of daily phases and year-long phases and life-long phases. I am a woman of bold, exploding phases and timid, hiding phases, and phases that pass in shadows and whispers on the wind. I am a woman of phases.

Still Searching

Well hello there :)

It's been ages and I won't apologise for that because I've been living my life in 3D and making mistakes and crying and laughing and watching strangers and wondering and taking photos and writing and writing and writing and remembering and puzzling and hurting and loving and listening and screaming and marching on even when my feet were crumbling.

Like I promised, I've spent three months traveling through Europe alone and trying to figure out the why and the what and the who. I didn't figure it out. I didn't find the answers I wanted but I think I've learned better (at least in some ways) how to live with myself. I think. I think I've also found more questions and uncertainties than I ever imagined. I've let go of pasts and found some that are not ready to release me. I've been more depressed than ever before and elated beyond my wildest fairytales.

I'm living in London now. I've found a job and I'm still looking for a room to rent - and that's what I dreamed of for years. I should be ecstatic, but I feel unsettled. I feel unfinished. 

For now I will stay, but I feel my heart's already left me for some distant land. It's already creeping through cobbled streets in Prague and squigging its toes in sand on the shores of Thailand.

There's so much more with each passing day and I'm beginning to wonder why children want to grow up at all. But maybe that's the beauty and torture of living - our hearts have a tendency to yearn for that which we cannot have.

I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower last night. I was shocked - it was infinitely better than I thought it would be. It made me love Emma more than ever. It made me want to hug Logan tightly. It made me wish Ezra was waiting by the door to drive me far away. But then surprisingly, instead of lifting me up it sent me spiraling down. I think it's how much I can relate to all three of them, how much I wish I had friends like that and a place to run to. It showed me what I am missing and how much I have to let go of and how much I have to learn of living.

For now I'm watching for each new day and gently pressing against the boundaries - testing for breaking points, plotting my escape.

PS I've finally got a computer now, which is why I'm able to post again - so feel free to comment/send messages if you like and I'll be better with chatting :)

dreaming big

Tomorrow I leap into the unknown and that scares me. Tomorrow I will be terrified. Tomorrow my life begins.

getting ready

The past few days I've started my real efforts at packing for my trip. It feels weird and exciting all at once.

I get really comfortable in one spot with the same people. It would be easy for me to stay here and continue to maintain the routines of my daily life forever, but there is something tugging on my heart. 

When I think of goodbyes and leaving, my chest grows heavy and I think that I shall never be brave enough to keep walking. But then, when I imagine open roads and the freedom of the world, that weight is gone and I feel my heart expanding in my chest, trying to absorb all the wonders.

I've heard it said that there is a plane leaving every minute. To me that means that every minute an adventure is starting and people are meeting new friends and old friends, they are reuniting and departing and crying and laughing; to me that is life at its best.

Sometimes the most uncomfortable and painful acts are the most worthwhile. Sometimes leaving is truly better than resigning. Sometimes the unknown is so much more lovely than the familiar. And sometimes, when your heart speaks to you, you should not hesitate, you should go.