background music

Two weeks ago, we completed three years together. What an amazing time it's been, and Shoelaces Undone, right here - has seen it all. Music, the lavender splashed right across my way to school, companionship, anger, jealousy - just about everything - singularity, plurality, Cubby-ness and a world without him.

Those times, generations ago when they were married to one another, was a different world all together. Love was unquestioning, affection was untainted. My arrival at home would be greeted with her hands stroking him to sleep. Or them playing cards. It's only now that I'm realizing how much of me has been shaped by these little events, these twosome games of Rummy.

Cityscapes

There are two ways of discovering a city.

One is by walking through its streets, getting lost even with a map because you don't have your bearings right. But every wrong turn you take, takes you to a new street which is bustling with activity - and as you walk down the street, you switch off your GPS and just, walk. Walk without aim, without reason and without direction. Walk wherever your feet take you, walk across people outside bars and restaurants too expensive on your student-pocket. Across lights that never turn green for cars, cyclists and pedestrians all at once. So you're always ahead, and you're always behind.

The other is by looking at a city from outside. It is only by being an outsider can you see a city in its wholeness. An airplane landing always has people craning to see the city beneath them. London Eye saw me looking at London the way I had never thought possible - with a little bit of fondness that I may have unconsciously developed for it. I also wondered how different life would be here, if I shared it with someone. If there was some familiarity to hold on to. Someone who knew me beyond my nationality, the tongue I speak or the year I was born in. Beyond my interests, my course and my student ID.

There are two ways of discovering life. Two ways of discovering who you're meant to be.

functions of solitude

Clean up after your dog, it says everywhere here. Or there's an eighty buck fine. Which comes to a lot, but I have to keep reminding myself not to convert everything. In the supermarket, or at stores. I also have to keep reminding myself not to think of my very own shedding monstrous furball all the time. The very thought of him makes walks and bus rides a tad bit difficult.

I arrived here at the beginning of fall, and leaves line sidewalks every morning and evening. Roads look different at different times of the day though. Days and evenings look different themselves, days being more bearable and evenings - well, not even close. The beauty of this city - the zigzagging traffic, the millions of boots mapping their way around and so many words of kindness shared daily, with the knowledge that they might get lost in the humdrum of another weekday - would have been a little more wonderful and intriguing, had thoughts of home not been such regular visitors.

They say that you can feel London winter right through your bones. As is the case with London loneliness. And the fact that when you stare at the clock ticking 21.46, thinking to yourself that it's already tomorrow back home is no easy feeling to live with. What dreams I must be missing. Sleep in the last week and a half has been absolutely dreamless. They have been elusive.

Some home cooked food lines your shelves. You don't touch it. Touching it would make home even more real. It would make your childhood and teenage, so much more tangible.