(It's okay, it will end tomorrow)
Honestly, I know it's an inevitable January thing, but it's very much been a month of two halves of me, which has only served to make it feel even longer.
I started my 2020 gently pottering about in Boston, on the east coast of the USA. I still can't quite believe how gentle I was with myself over my three weeks over there (maybe too gentle?)
Generally when travelling in recent years I have tried to force myself out of my comfort zone, do new things, go on grand adventures... I really don't feel like I did so much of that this time, but I probably needed a rest, after the 2019 I had.
I did force myself to go for a run along quiet residental streets (my first since before Charlie got ill), marvelling at the strangenesses and similarities of American homes compared to ours. I also went for a walk by the harbour, had an EXTREMELY good pizza, and wrote my very long blog about the last decade. Who knows if looking back is a good way to start a new ten years, but I think it was a valuable exercise.
On the 2nd I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, and it was absolutely incredible — I can't recommend it enough, if you're ever in Boston. A Venetian style palace built by an eccentric but shrewd Victorian art collector/curator, it is wildly over the top, weird, diverse, and fascinating. I highly recommend going earlier in the day — my visit was definitely nicer because it was quieter, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it so much if it was as busy as it was when I was leaving.
I had a relatively solitary three weeks in Boston. At home in London I'd get lonely if I didnt hang out with anyone for that long, but I found the experience of solitude so far from home extremely peaceful, and fell quickly into comfortable routines in my friend Deb's apartment where I was staying — many of which revolved around caring for her feline companions, Zoe (total sweetheart) and Leroy (kind of an absolute nightmare though with moments of great loveliness, mostly just a total cheeky troll). I spent a lot of time yelling 'Leroy!' while trying to establish just how badly she was fucking something up...
I spent way too much money while I was over there too, but I planned for this, I saved for this, because I knew that a lot of the appeal of this trip was being able to eat ALL THE THINGS and also treat myself to weird stuff I can't get in the UK. I went to an extremely mediocre shopping mall (kind of fun regardless). I had a terrible, hilarious time in Victoria's Secret in which the incredibly pushy sales team REFUSED to accept that none of their bras would fit me. I had my... third? Fourth? Vegan whopper from Burger King. I got loads of great socks. It was a good time.
I did still have the lingering sense that I was being insufficiently ambitious in my adventures though, so I got the train (about half an hour) out to Salem, famous for... witches. It was EXTRAORDINARILY cold (for me, really not that bad by Massachusetts standards), there were insufficient public toilets, and the only decent looking vegan food place was closed, so... I didn't have loads of fun, but it was nice enough. I didn't really have that much interest in any of the history/museums stuff, but I weirdly really enjoyed all the shops selling witchy tat, despite not really going in for that kind of thing normally (bought myself some ridiculous crystals, including an adorable half-size quartz phallus), and there was a great dress shop. Mostly I just really enjoyed riding the double decker train to get there and back.
In a fit of spontaneity, GOT MY SEPTUM PIERCED! I mean, it's something I'd been considering for quite a while but I maybe hadn't planned on doing it IN AMERICA. But hey, there was a nice seeming piercing shop just over the road from where I was staying and I figured if not now, when?
I found the whole thing extremely chill (I can't quite explain it but piercings/tattoos are weirdly comforting, in the experience of having them — at least the relatively low pain ones I've had have been). The septum piercing was almost painless as it happened, and though putting in the jewellery immediately after was a bit sore, the whole thing was really very low key. The hardest part was the following few days snot management, particularly given that I was often out in the cold wind and/or eating spicy food, which definitely didn't help the situation. At least I didn't still have a cold though...
The next day in other 'extravagant body admin' adventures, I got my first ever dip powder manicure. In the review I read it was sold with the phrase 'hate waiting for gels to dry? Try this!' (I don't, but sure)... But in practice, this takes WAY longer, is WAY more unpleasant a process (lots of... grinding), and feels decidedly weird/tight initially. But damn, they look incredible, and 24 days later, are still IMMACULATE, not one chip, so on reflection I probably would get one again. (Also great colour options, the one I chose is very much channeling 'granite kitchen counter / TV static' vibes)
Though my 'in-house' nail salon (I live above a nail bar :D) said they're a bloody nightmare to get off, so I may be stuck with them a while...
For my last week in Boston, I was working my regular hours for my main employer (9.45 – 13.30 each day) as well as freelance work. It was nice to get back into a routine (though I had been working on freelance stuff, at times quite intensively, over the whole trip so far). I enjoyed sitting at Deb's kitchen table (better for my back) with the morning sun shining in on me, listening to afternoon-time-shifted BBC radio and actually feeling quite focussed for the first time in ages.
This day was an extra special work treat though, I got to go and visit Pine Manor College, which is where the company I work for has a campus. It was really nice to go and see my lovely colleagues again, do some training stuff, and see all the places I usually only get to see in photos. Also eat loads of tater tots in the canteen.
I love riding trains, and over my time in Boston, tried to traverse as much of the red line as I could. Got the train all the way to the top end, Alewife, to go to the big Trader Joes, then went to Davis, to a particular thrift store a colleague had recommended the previous day (it was indeed very good), and then walked to Porter, idly browsing shops as I went. Porter was a particularly great station — extremely weird ambiance and a great piece of installation art called 'Glove Cycle' which consisted of loads of slightly sinister brass castings of abandoned gloves littered across the whole station.
Oh no, I bought too much stuff. Not even WILDLY too much, I just made the mistake of bringing a suitcase with basically no spare space at all. So I had to go buy a big stupid suitcase from Target and I hate myself. Bought some more shoes to make myself feel better...
Nearly time to go home, but some fleeting moments with Alfred, freshly returned from Christmas break at home in LA, to his new(ish) teaching role at Berklee College of music. He'd caught a red-eye flight and spent much of the day interviewing prospective students, so is somehow even tireder than I am, but also always the very sweetest, and it's so nice to get to see his new apartment (sparse, mostly covered in wires and bits of modular synthesiser)
We have a rare day together where we do not have to do anything. Normally whenever we're together we're travelling. He's playing shows, we're running from place to place. It's always a fun adventure, but there's a strange peace to just getting to exist together. We go out for a nice brunch (and coffee for him, always). Stroll through some record shops (I've got a big suitcase now so might as well make the most of the space, eh...?) Come back to his apartment and both do some gentle work. One of the modules he's teaching is 'finger drumming' — 'I'd better practice so that I don't embarass myself in front of the students' he says, before tapping out wildly complex sequences immaculately on a midi fighter controller. 'Now it's your turn!' he says after a bit.
LOL no
One of my great embarrassments is that I have a fairly terrible sense of both rythym and coordination. I am utterly terrible at guitar hero. I have never managed to learn to play any kind of instrument. And now, here, my love, also my musical idol, is asking me to try and do this thing?
Reader, it did not go well for me.
Obviously he was incredibly sweet, and patient, and probably viewed me as a valuable teaching opportunity, but nonetheless, I am SHAMED
(Sufficiently shamed that I have since been working my way through Melodics free finger drumming course every day, and am finding it incredibly rewarding, and hopefully saving myself from any future similar embarrassment. Maybe even opening some doors towards potentially mastering actually making pleasing sounds of my own one day, but I daren't dream quite that big. Mostly just a satisying process to learn.)
In the evening we went out for glorious bibimbap and ice cream. I'd missed him.
We both wake up at around 4am and lie awake and talk and look at our phones for a little while, in half embrace. I briefly sleep again, but he is up and gone to work at around 6am, leaving me quietly flitting around his apartment, writing, and packing, and drawing, and thinking. I go out and get myself some lunch, and then gather my things and get a taxi to the airport mid afternoon.
Time at airports (when everything is running smoothly) always seems to go weirdly fast. I get there about 4 hours early, but somehow just sitting quietly, the time flies.
Throughout this whole trip, S, the person I started dating before I left, has been a reassuringly constant presence at the other end of whatsapp. We talk, prolifically, every day. I enjoy waking up each morning, knowing that there will be messages awaiting me, and miss them during the evenings, when, because of time zones, they fall asleep much earlier than I do. While I wait in the airport we catch up. I have been so comforted to recognise and understand how love can extend and expand and encompass. My only practical experience of polamory previously had been falling for Alfred alongside the long-term presence of my relationship with Ava, and I had been curious as to whether my continuing relatively intense love of Alfred (still very new feeling, despite being over two years now) would prevent me from being able to form new attachments. Meeting S has confirmed that this is not the case. Love grows, love stretches, love expands, to meet what's required of it. I feel so lucky to have come to this understanding of myself, and how relationships can be.
It's a night flight back, and I have a whole row of seats to myself. I lie on my side across them and manage to sleep for maybe an hour or two, but mostly lie awake, thinking about it all. Almost exactly this time last year I was on a similar night flight back home from LA. I lay across the seats in the darkness just like this, dreading arriving, because I knew I was about to go home and end my relationship with Ava. It feels so different this time, and, in that strange way that one sometimes does when many thousands of metres above the earth, I feel extremely peaceful about whatever might be coming next.
London is horrible to me.
I have barely slept for 24 hours. My bag takes forvever to come round the carousel. I can barely move it due to aforementioned big suitcase purchase. When I get to Paddington, the tube is closed, and I have to wait about 15 minutes for it to re-open. All the lifts are out of order, so I have to, extremely painfully, heave my big stupid suitcase up and down several flights of stairs (at rush hour, I am actually the worst person, I hate myself). Several men chivalrously offer to help me and then clearly immediately regret doing so. The lifts at Victoria are out of order too, fuuuuuuckkkkkk thisssssss. I then realise that I have no idea where my house keys are, and have to disgorge the entire contents of my large suitcase over the disabled toilet floor in order to find them. I buy a box of terrible noodles from Wasabi even though I know they're terrible and it's only 9am. I get the bus from Victoria back to my house and IT BREAKS DOWN HALFWAY (by this point I could weep), I swap buses, I eventually get home, I abandon my suitcase in the hallway, I inhale my box of terrible noodles, I sleep for three hours, ALL IS WELL.
Later, Beck brings Charlie back. He is delighted, I am delighted, and it's so lovely to see Beck too, and have a supportive presence while I am still hazy post-flight. S comes over later as well. We all eat pizza then I politely retire to my room with S and definitely immediately sleep. 👀
They stick around most of the next day, which is lovely. I am straight back to work, but they also have to work, so we work together, and it's wonderful. I hugely enjoy their presence in my space.
I am extremely jet lagged in a way which I have not been when coming back from previous US trips, which is unhelpful, but I persist. Me and Rosie and Heidi go see a fun art installation in a big warehouse, and eat some pizza.
I only did a couple of runs while I was in Boston, despite my best intentions. Trying to get back on it with a bit more purpose now. Well, I say 'a bit more purpose', I think I actually just mean 'run round the perimeter of Battersea Park (around 2.2 miles) three times a week'... That's enough, right?!
Went to see Byron Wallen's gamelan ensemble cover one of my favourite albums of all time — Boards of Canada's 'Music has the right to children'. It was weird and wonderful and hilarious and magic all at once (thanks for the hook up Kier!)
(Also I was quite pleased with this crude, watery gouache version of the album cover, for those of you familiar with it!)
Charlie seems to have had a fun time on holiday in Yorkshire, and also to have settled immediately back into London life with little stress or anxiety. Nonetheless, I still do spend a lot of time stroking his silky ears and looking into his unfathomable eyes and hoping that I am giving him a good life.
I was worrying a bit about work before Christmas. I think that might be how it is now that I am CRUCIALLY DEPENDENT on maxing out my time in order to pay rent and do fun things. I was really lucky in that I had several relatively large, but also chill projects to get on with while I was in Boston. However on my return everything was decidedly not chill for a little while there. (Better than the alternative though, lolsob, hire me)
I'd kind of forgotten that London won't be strange and new forever. I already knew many fragments of it to varying degrees of depth from visiting over the years, but the more I walk and travel, the more the map builds in my brain. Brains are magic. Cities are magic.
I'm still EXTREMELY TIRED and working very hard, but somehow a friend of my mum's has a free VIP pass to the London Art Fair which she's given me, and it seems a shame to waste it, so I force myself up to Angel, look at a HUGE QUANTITY of varying qualities of art very fast and grumpily and then leave.
In a much more measured art experience, I go and see the Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the White Cube the next day, and it is good.
Took Charlie down to Chichester to meet my parents dog Fern for the first time. Thankfully, they were remarkably chill together after some initial laying down of boundaries (mostly a firm 'don't bother me' from Charlie)
Heidi and Rosie are great. We have a whatsapp group called 'cultural excursions' where we plan fun things to do, and occasionally leave each other long winded voicemails about our dating successes/nightmares.
(I was walking round Battersea park being happy about the remarkably large parakeet population while texting them)
Because yeah, dating is really fun and great
(Things are still lovely with S, BUT, they had a terrible flu for well over a week after we last saw each other, and then were so stressed about catching up with work that they'd basically refused to arrange any dates with me because they were first too gross and then too stressed, and this is turn made me wildly paranoid they'd gone off me, despite there being no other reason to believe this, lol brains, aren't they great at thinking way too hard about everything)
We still talk to each other a lot, from afar (well, South to North London, that's basically a long distance relationship, right?)
We love each others style.
Anyway, it's not like me to feel this way, and it turns out, there's a very good HORMONAL reason why I do. Lolsob. I am a disgusting mess, hi, hello!
And what better mood to be in than that, to roll into our new, post-EU future. It's been a horrendous four years, and we seem to have left so very, devastatingly quietly. All the more so for its quietness maybe. Now watching, and waiting, and holding on, and figuring out what's next. Let's hold on to each other.
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