Inquiring minds have inquired as to the status of my accommodations: their status is totally great.
Last year when I came to London, I stayed in a closet-sized London School of Economics dorm room. It was…fine. It was fine. The shared bathrooms were fine. The lack of internet was fine. The tour groups of Italian teenagers who I was sharing the bathrooms with were fine. The lack of kitchen facilities was fine. The tiny beds were fine. It was all fine. But it wasn’t good. (The free breakfast, though, that was pretty good.)
If I were to really level with you, I would admit that I think I actually started to go crazy in my little tiny room after a while. The trip was really fun and productive, but there were a lot of…long dark nights of the soul, mostly dissertation-related, that I think were probably exacerbated by living in a closet.
Now I am staying in a nice, big studio apartment in the attic of a nice old Georgian townhouse, and I have a kitchen and my own bathroom and it’s not even outrageously expensive (with the exchange rate, it’s probably costing me around what my rent is in LA, which probably is outrageously expensive, but in my LA-tainted mind, it’s totally reasonable). It is good. It is really really good.
Here is the view of the city on a sunny day that I can see from the window at the back of my apartment:
and here is my temporary Room of One’s Own. I love: The high ceilings, the big windows (these were taken at night, so you can’t see how bright it gets in here), and the tiny, miniature oven.
I was feeling all cranky yesterday because, well, because I hate dealing with people who are just plain mean-spirited and awful, and I had to deal with a mean-spirited awful person, and I was mad about it because it was related to a thing that I was hoping would just stay in LA and not bother me here. I am not good at dealing with these kinds of things because I end up internalizing a lot of anger, and I’m uncomfortable communicating that anger because, I always second guess my own feelings and can never admit that they are valid. And I also have a lot of anxiety about how people will react to me when I say what I think. So that is to say, I end up spending a lot of time drafting fantasy angry emails that I never send. So I was doing this yesterday, in my head, and then I realized that I was
a) sitting having a coffee at Ray’s Jazz Cafe, which is located in Foyle’s bookstore, which is a lovely place,
b) about to go see an off-West End show,
c) in fucking London, doing whatever the fuck I wanted,
and that maybe being angry was a waste of my energy.
And then I saw a play, and it was good and made me glad. And then I got home and discovered thatRaffi made a song out of Jack Layton’s letter to Canada, and even though I am typically averse to sentiment or even admitting that I have feelings (see above), it made me cry. And I was like, you’re right, Jack, what am I even doing. Sitting around feeling impotently angry is always a silly idea.
Also, I think I am giving myself a repetitive strain injury from sitting in the library too much, so I guess that means that tomorrow I have to shopping on the Portobello Road instead. TOO BAD FOR YOU, library.