She’s been denied entry from her city for days now and it’s having a disgusting effect on her. Back home, she’d never complain about holing up in her room for days on end, having cup of tea after cup of tea as it rains and the clouds show grey and white as they move rapidly across her window. But she doesn’t have much time and she’s going a little stir-crazy as it is, with nothing of import to do, and so she curls up in her room and dreams of the City.
She puts on the music that she listens to as she travels the City—the song that showed up on her iPod the first magical day she spent wandering the streets in the cold winter air—and lets herself fall to dreaming. The music itself is compelling and she leans into the images it conjures up. The City in the crisp winter air, blood rushing to people’s cheeks as the wind howls; the City in the bright, bright sunshine, summer come a month too early, everyone in shorts and skirts, the cacophony more joyous this time, bright, coppery, smelling of holidays.
Her favorite, however, is the City in the late afternoon sun. Almost dusk, the gold makes everything shine; the people are smiling as they head home from work, to their families or to the pubs. Children on holiday from school run and laugh, older students play with a football, tourists trample to and fro with their cameras around their necks.
She drowns herself in the memories, in the music as it risesrisesrises to the climax, pressing herself further and further into the comforter on her bed as if she can dive right into the City through the images in her mind.
She awakes from her reverie with a smile on her face and calm in her heart.
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The trains from Berrylands to Waterloo have been down since Friday and today there's one from Kingston, but it was about 12.30 when I found this out and drizzling cold rain and I must admit, I was reluctant to go up to Kingston and then into the city and then back to Kingston and back home. So I had a leisurely pub lunch and then came home to do some writing and a strange sort of meditating.
I've felt something pressing on my brain the last couple days. Not bad, not unpleasant, just an itch of some kind. I've been lamenting the realization that I'm a writer without a story to tell and it's been irritating me, something just out of reach that I keep jumping to get to but can't quite grab. I think it's because I've been in constant motion for the past month-ish and then all the action came to a complete stop last week and inertia is a funny thing with me. I never want to stop and once I stop, I don't have the drive to start again. So I spent today emptying my brain of some of the thoughts pressing on my brain the most.
I know, I know, I still owe you the story of Istanbul. I will do so, I promise, definitely before I leave for Italy this weekend.
The other party of my family should have touched down in England by now. I'll be seeing them tomorrow, at the Tower of London first, if I remember aright, and then we'll be doing some fun England-y things. Should get some good pictures for you.
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