green unpleasant

[devi]

England really made an effort as I was coming back from Gatwick yesterday morning. It hit me with the works: darling buds and clouds of blossom on the trees, baby lambs who were definitely gambolling, morning mist lifting softly from the fields, half-timbered houses covered in climbing rose, shafts of sunlight beaming from the clouds. "Look at me! Look at me!" it was saying. "What a green and pleasant land I am!"

But despite all that, and despite deciding halfway across the Atlantic to cram my ears with all the music I could think of that would remind me where my loyalties lay - the Streets, the Clash, the Pistols, Saint Etienne, "Irish Blood, English Heart" - I'm sorry to be home. I'm back in the flat, which seems poky and grubby and cheerless, and my suitcase is sitting behind me, reproaching me for no longer living out of it.

I've had three weeks of adventure, exploration, converting strangers into friends, and freedom from all the burdens of ordinary life. London and work and bills and daily grind were literally on the far side of the world, not my problem. This is part of what holidays are for. I'd forgotten.

That could apply to any holiday, but also... I went to America full of preconceptions. Most of them got proved wrong. But the one thing I wasn't expecting was getting completely smitten with the place. I have a new crush on America. I left my heart in San Francisco, I could actually feel the drag in my chest as we sped away from it on the BART, and then went on to leave other vital organs in Portland and Seattle. I loved small things (peanut butter milkshakes; beatnik bookshops with sections labelled "Anarchy", "Class War" and "Muckraking"; endless coffee; smoking cloves on a balcony in Seattle looking at the sunset over the Olympic mountains) and big things (the way they've got proper, vast, breathtaking wilderness; the way everyone we met seemed so politicised, principled and angry with the government and generally not apathetic). Of course there was bad stuff too, like beggars with one leg and the hollowness of Hollywood, but I was expecting the bad stuff. I wasn't expecting the love, so it knocked me over.

People, please help remind me why I love London. I do. It's always mixed with hate, but every time I think I've had enough of this city it shows me something amazing or tantalises me with a story, and I feel the rush of being at the centre of things and forgive it for another while. That feeling will come back given a little time, I know.

I feel completely stateless right now. I don't want to move back to Ireland any time soon, and it isn't quite the Ireland I left anyway. I feel dislocated from London, and I've always known doing the London Thing wasn't forever, and I can't think of anywhere else in the UK I'd really like to live. And everyone knows brand-new shiny crushes are not to be trusted. Where on earth do I belong?

Comments

[rowan-leigh.livejournal.com]

Manchester! ?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

True, I haven't tried there. I've barely even been there. It seems kind of intriguing because it's Jeff Noon country, though I might just go there and be disappointed because there are no dog people or crusties with cyborg hair :)

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Replace America with Australia, and aside from not being surprised (although the strength of how good I felt when I went back surprised me) you've just described exactly how I've been feeling since I got back last week. I've lost my London love.

I'm also well aware that running around seeing people I love and ignoring everyday life and exploring new cities is not the same as living in the country, and I have a faint memory of loving stuff in the UK that I'd miss back home.

I don't know why I'm rambling, really. I don't have an answer. I just really really empathise.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

You're so right in the second paragraph there. If I had to deal with American bureaucracy, trying to get a job etc, no doubt I wouldn't be quite so smitten. This is what I'm trying to remind myself :)

[arosoff.livejournal.com]

The West Coast (especially SF!) is not america. ;) You won't find the raving Bushites there.

If you want to get depressed about the state of the US, go visit the South, where the Republican Dream (or Nightmare) is in full swing. Still, even there you can be pleasantly surprised: the people can have the most awful political views, but they can also be nice in ways that Northerners (much less Britons) never expect.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

The West Coast is *an* America, I think, and there are lots of Americas, but the one I happened to see was great.

I flew out through Atlanta, and there was something indefinably different about the atmosphere... I don't know if it was the look of the people or the difference in the ads or the food on offer or what, but I suddenly realised 'oh Christ, I'm in a RED STATE!' I hope it was just my paranoid imagination, but all the way through Atlanta airport I felt like I was getting dirty looks for my Docs and my dyed hair and my army jacket.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Where on earth do I belong?

I think you may have to make your own place. It's what most people end up doing with lesser or greater degrees of success.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Eventually, yeah, I hope to do that. Probably that much-discussed house :) I just don't know where my roots want to plant themselves in order to do that yet.

Have you read Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem? It's a sci-fi novel where something's happened to the fabric of the world so that bubbles of reality develop around 'strong dreamers', becoming what they think the world should be like. One bit is post-apocalypse survivalist, another is thin people only, in another the people are sort of suburban nomads. But America's like that anyway. Maybe I need to dream stronger, to make my own little bubble.

[ruudboy.livejournal.com]

Portland's excellent. Did you go in the stupidly big bookshop?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Oh god yes. I spent about four hours in there. I could easily have spent four more.

[prayinmantis.livejournal.com]

aw, you and verlaine's posts make me feel so patriotic! i'm ~glad~ you guys like the u.s., that really says something. it was so swell to meet you. xx

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Great to meet you too. I loved your dream about the broken-down car and the truckers all calling you 'honey' :)

[ravenblack.livejournal.com]

Bah, you people visiting the bits of the US that aren't depressing, and then saying you like the US. That's not nearly as fun as me visiting mostly the bits that *are* depressing and then saying I hate it. (I did visit SF briefly, and did quite like it, such that if it were all I'd visited I'd probably think I liked America too.)

You belong in Canada, though. Glad I could help.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

See reply to arosoff - I'm well aware I've only seen one aspect of America. But what I saw certainly wasn't depressing.

I thought I'd belong in Canada too, that when I went to Vancouver something would click into place - but it left me rather cold. I haven't given it enough of a chance, though - we were only there for a day, it rained all the time and we had no one to hang out with or show us around there.

[stiofan.livejournal.com]

Hmmm "Where on earth do I belong?" - there's a question.

I'm asking myself the same thing a lot, especially given the current unpleasant limbo and stalled change that I seem to be in. I've a good idea of what I like, and where I don't want to be but none of this helps much. I love living by the sea at the moment, but it's not "home", the UK in general still feels strange to me and whilst a couple of days back in Ireland recharges parts of me, I'm in no hurry to move back long term. None of this unfortunately points to anything that's in anyway familiar or even encouraging for that matter. I'm guessing I need to see more places, or make one but I don't know where to start and motivation is low at the moment. Things need to change and move on though, if you get any pointers please let us know.

Sorry for harping on a bit.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my relationship with Ireland. When I first get home, part of me relaxes in a big long sigh and it feels great. But after a few days I get all antsy and I'm happy to get away and get another buzz of London...

Harp away!

[xxxlibris.livejournal.com]

Sympathy. Dunno if this will help but I've just come back to LA from my week back home and have been having similar thoughts. Leaving LA was hard - the sun and the palm trees and general fabulousness, and arriving to a cold drizzly London was worse.

But - a week in and I didn't want to come back to LA. Things about London/England which made me happy: the view across London from the top of Primrose Hill; being able to buy booze without being ID'd; all my mates in one place; a (reasonably) non-bonkers press; Doctor Who (possibly stretching things a bit here).

So I am back in LA now, and whilst I'm looking forward to the next few months very very much I also think that the transition back to UK life in August should be ok.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

all my mates in one place

I think this is actually the clincher.

One tactic which helps me not book myself on the first plane back to London is to remember that central London is a place that a lot of people pass through without settling in forever. I wouldn't want to go back to London just to watch "my" people slowly scatter to the four corners of the map. I used to think I'd never want to leave Oxford, but time proved me wrong. We have to find a good place of our own.

Is the US press really that bonkers? I've seen plentiful evidence of it being a bit pants, but if you want bonkerdom there are numerous mainstream UK papers that I'd hold up over anything I've yet found on the sidewalks of the West Coast.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I feel completely stateless right now. [...] Where on earth do I belong?

Same place I do from the sounds of it: nowhere geographical.

Physical places miss the point, as I see it. Oxford in the early 90s was a place I loved, but that place ceased to exist long ago - Oxford today shares little more than the name and a few old buildings. Likewise for Cambridge in the 80s. Feltham isn't my place either, but it's where I want to be right now. And next... who knows, but it doesn't really matter.

Events. Ideas. People. Games. My world is made of these things, not geography.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

bateleur, meet gothwalk ^^^ :)

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

Try sunset over Waterloo Bridge. Or fab free museums. The grot, the beauty, the old bits and the new. St Bride's, I seem to recall you liked that one. The parks, and the views. Crisp mornings - we had snow again, did anyone tell you? So no idea what else April might bring. The quiet spots, the loud spots too - come out to Synthetic Culture on Friday!

I've never been to the USA, so don't share your crush, but I think I'm slowly becoming a Londoner by choice, on my second go here. Hope you feel less blue soon.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Good point about the museums. We did a fair bit of museuming, but it seemed wrong that it all cost money when you can just wander into the British Museum or Tate Modern to pass a few idle minutes...

Hmm, Synthetic Culture. Feel quite broke but hmmm.

[hollowfulofhat.livejournal.com]

I agree with others above that urban west-coast America isn't the America I know.

I've discussed with others in the UK that when British people (sorry to lump you in with them!) visit the US for the first time, their opinion of America generally improves a lot, whereas when Americans visit London (for that is where they generally go), their opinion usually becomes more negative: "What?! You mean not everyone lives in a manor house? Or has servants?" I'm exaggerating slightly, but I have observed the effect many times.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Much apologisings if I already asked you this, but where *is* the America you know?

And now I'm remembering *blush* Three Men and a Little Lady, which featured an England where everyone is a lord or a lady, the only car you can rent is a Mini and every road is covered in sheep...

[miramanga.livejournal.com]

Athlone

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Aaargh! Aaargh! Say it's not so!

London Pride

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

This does it for me:

In our city darkened now, street and square and crescent
We can feel our living past in our shadowed present
Ghosts beside our starlit Thames
Who lived and loved and died
Keep throughout the ages London Pride.

London Pride has been handed down to us
London Pride is a flower that's free
London Pride means our own dear town to us
And our pride it for ever will be.

Grey city, stubbornly implanted
Taken so for granted for a thousand years.
Stay, city, smokily enchanted
Cradle of our memories and hopes and fears.

~ Noel Coward

Re: London Pride

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Good old Noel. He's right, I shouldn't take poor old London so for granted.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

People who don't belong other places belong in London. hoshuteki is whinging about how you don't love us any more when we want you to STAY. But you know, London is a beast that spits us up and chews us out, but somehow it keeps some of us here. If you want to go back to America I'll forgive you in ten years or so...

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the people. It's just the gruellingness and the rent and the council tax and the job that isn't actually all that good and the huge commutes and the difficulty of seeing any countryside and the tube soot in your nose &c &c that's getting me down.

But really, it is the people who make a place, when you come down to it. And you're great. (Plus your appreciation of London is inspiring)

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Welcome back!

Actually, you are a citizen of BlueDevi and you have that gift of loving the place that you are.

Not, of course, loving it unconditionally - or rather, blindly: but that's not love, it's infatuation and you definitely wouldn't be happy living there.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Are we not all inhabitants of Blogistan?

[casca-2u.livejournal.com]

There's more than a little bit of London in the big cities in Australia (minus the poor weather - although I had nothing but blue skies and sunshine where i was in London last year!). Creative, ambitious, entreprenurial people have traditionally made their pilgramage to London as a rite of passage, from Australia, imbibe more than a bit of London-ness, then bring it back home with them...

[randalf.livejournal.com]

Definitely a bad case of post-holiday blues. It'll pass in a while, but the best ongoing cure is of course to start planning your next trip to the West Coast!

In fact, since I feel your pain, drop me a line (darryl -at- randalf -dot- com will do it) for details of a cheap way of getting a flight back!

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

London is Luan-Dun, city of the moon. Generally England looks better in comics than America.

But I agree, the US is amazing, can't wait to visit myself. Like, all of those accents... I just want to grab an American and scream "like, OMG I love your accent, are you related to George Bush?" or something.

[holzfallen.livejournal.com]

Got the keys back in the mail today, thank you. Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip. It's ok to move to London, the US will still be here whenever you want to come and visit.

a little behind the times

[shermarama]

But come to Brighton! Go on. We have our own special weather system and strange midwinter festivals and the sea and hills and people who give a shit about stuff and an anarchist bookshop and social club that sells stout with espresso in it and an unlikely number of samba bands and all sorts of good stuff. And all the press about the new library is true, it really is ace.