I spent much time going from New York to LA and back again, and now I don’t know whether I’m nice but not so kind or kind but not so nice. Perhaps I’m more London, anyway - polite, pleasant enough. No excessive frills. The kind of person you finally warm up to once you’ve been down the pub with them a couple of times, or maybe I’m Manchester - rough around the edges but reassuringly warm-hearted. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what city we identify with/as since we’re always, always morphing (see last post). You’re only a mosaic of deeds, thoughts, and the seconds you‘ve lived. You can change the pattern today if you so desire. You can decide to be London, New York, Lagos, Quebec, or Bangkok and stick to it.
When I’m at my busiest, I’m vague; hardly my best version. I wax over, forgetting life’s flourishes. I stop checking the names of trees. I stop going to the bookshop just to be surprised. I never know what to have for dinner. This lack of attention to life leaves me unsatisfied. I want more conscious, mindful thought around my waking existence, more garnish & deliberate decoration. I want to slow all the way down as though there’s nothing called rent. I need more time alone with my oven. A friend with whom I agreed to begin written correspondence sent me a letter back in the Summer from Brooklyn. It’s suddenly February - I’ve still yet to reply. Where to begin, though? You go to write, and the pen is missing, or it’s not the one you want. What will I say? Hi, friend. Everything is falling. Falling. I’m grateful for the lessons…but must we always be in school? I cannot bring myself to write to you yet because I’m afraid the letter will be a deep hole without an end, without an answer. I don’t want to fall myself inside it. I won’t know how to come back. Mate - it’s as simple as this;
I’m tired.
You’re fucking tired.
Everyone’s tired.
I have recently been thinking I don’t want to fuel a machine that won’t fuel us. You. Me. But how do you go about getting out from under it? I realise that I might have always felt absolutely Underneath It.
I have spent many hours in aeroplanes recently and, as such, am having trouble sleeping. I decided to get out of bed, put on some cold face serum, mix some chamomile flowers and honey and write this.
I am thinking about our mothers. My mother raised me to care about work first because that is what you did, especially when you were from the Caribbean, and there was Nothing Without Working Hard. All the tangibles (love, affection, attention) were in short supply, dried goods in a disaster. My mother told me to work. Work. Work hard. You may see your family at the end if you have one, and that’s just how it has to be. They (the family) will thank you later. Well, we never got time to thank her. I think about her shift work, traumas and the litany of fissures and disappointments - how the damning information and years of missed sleep multiplied in her body; a betrayal. My mother did her best. Only and always her best. I am doing my best, but this Best will not sustain me without constant compromise. Even in death, my mother speaks to me. There she is, from the deep beyond, spitting inconvenient facts. Mate - I’m reaching my end. It’s back to the drawing board. I don’t want work to take me over. The only work to take me must be the work of deep living. I’m so ready to survive in a beautiful, more enduring way. Oh, to be gentle, fair, thoughtful, and inspiring from the bottom of my heart because it’s the right thing to do, and it comes from the depth of me, not because it’s some rote, learned behaviour, and I’m too afraid of upsetting people. I want to be better. Truer. I want to spend more time in my kitchen making things and less time on my email. Or at airports, hurrying up to wait around. So I divvy everything up into two distinct categories: things that seem not to matter but do, in fact, matter and things that seem to matter but do not, in fact, matter, and I am often shocked at what bleeds out - what has marbled, what left the page.
Yes - exactly that. To live a more enduring, beautiful existence xx
Omg I absolutely love this! Your storytelling is so engaging 😍