from my notebook: london, friends, post-birthday sentimentality
“To read is to cover one’s face. To write is to show it.” - Alejandro Zumbra
Sometimes, you find a place in the world where you can just step in and you’re immediately part of it, integrated almost seamlessly, as if its memories have always lived in your skin.
In my early twenties, that was New York. I landed in JFK for the first time in 2002, and stepping out of the airport, the shock was not one of cultural dissonance, but of cultural familiarity. Somehow, even then, I felt I belonged, even without really understanding what it was I belonged to. It seemed like the city had always been waiting for me; I was home in a place I had never been to before.
I didn’t really think I would feel that way about any other city again. But I did. At the onset of my thirties, it was London.
In London, I almost always find myself taking on this odd iteration of my identity. I’m perceived as American, but I’m not. I didn’t grow up there, I have a different values system, and I know I’m still very much a product of my Eastern upbringing, nevermind how many times I may have re-colored my facades. So I’m incredibly conscious of inhabiting this intersection between how I see myself, and how I must come off to others. Yet even as I say that, I’m also aware that inherent in my personality is the need to adapt. It’s a thrill, I suppose, this penchant for wearing other people’s worlds, as if I were living in some convoluted masquerade created only for myself.
In London, I can hear my words crisp up, starched like soldiers’ uniforms. My vowels suck in their stomachs. My consonants sharpen their collective edge. And the rest of me always follows. Maybe that’s why I’ve always liked it here.
When people ask me when I’m coming home, I never know what to say. Home, perhaps to someone like me more than any other person, is theoretical, an idea that grows ever more vague.
A confession: more often than not, I feel as if home is the point from which I’m constantly away.
Many times, I’ve been asked about homesickness and settling down. And I answer that I am always homesick, wherever I am. And I am always settling, in one form or another: I empty my pockets, and I find coins of various currencies, cards from far-flung laundromats, receipts from cafes in cities that feel fictional and unreal, train tickets to places I barely remember. I have keys to rooms I may never see again. My palms still carry the faint weight of hands that have already moved back to routines I can only watch from a distance. The sediments of me have settled in many places. These are my pieces. This is my life.
(And do you see how I’ve planted these tiny pieces of myself, how I’ve spread my insides across so much space? I can never be gathered in one place now. But perhaps that’s just what it means to grow old.)
Still, while my geographic allegiances are inconstant, my personal loyalties are not. I don’t always remember places and faces, but I remember trust. I remember kindness. I remember comfort and concern. I remember the way my face can fit in the curve of someone’s back. I remember the shelter in someone else’s skin.
(I write you down, and I remember.)
In my way, I commit to people - to friends, and lovers, and mothers and sisters - in ways that can baffle. Perhaps, more than anyone I know, I take my friendships seriously. I’m loyal, almost to a fault.
Let me tell you something: the people I’ve let in are never let out.
And this tribe I’ve collected, these people I’ve fit into my spaces, they will tell their stories if you let them: how I drive across cities to rescue friends from bad decisions, nevermind what I may have been doing, nevermind that we haven’t spoken in months. How I cross continents simply to offer solace. How I always forgive, how my loyalties transcend morality, how my understanding and empathy can wrap around the world.
The longitudes and latitudes of me are ephemeral and elusive, but I’ve always been willing to go the distance. I always show up when needed. Nevermind where I may be when you make the call.
Because here it is, what should already be evident to all of you, even if I’ve never said it out loud: you are my roots, and you are my firmaments. I have spread myself across your landscapes; If I must settle down, then I choose to settle down in all the many grooves and gaps you’ve left for me.
london friends writing lit prose journal bored at work
Originally published on Tumblr, February 2013.