It has been a couple of weeks since my last post, so apologies to my fans out there in the tubes for the delay. I have sat down to write several times in the past few weeks and couldn’t come up with anything. Not that life has been hum-drum – although it also hasn’t been a wild ride either. I have just been knee deep in adjustment – all of those mundane activities like finding the local natural grocer where I can find tofu and soy ice cream, unpacking, navigating a complex system of buses and tubes that are not the internet, and getting a library card. But the adjustment has been more emotional than anything else. I have long considered myself a fiercely independent person. I am not new to traveling, being alone, and moving to new places (i.e. San Francisco). I know how do to it, I’m comfortable asking for a table for one, and I always make sure I know how to navigate safely as a female traveling alone. But, as I get older, wiser, or simply more boring, I am finding this resettling far more difficult than the rest.
The last time I went gallivanting across miles was three years ago when I moved to San Francisco on a whim. I had just graduated from college and wanted adventure and change. Where could be more different from Baltimore, Maryland? I had no idea that I would find love and happiness there more than I could have ever imagined. The city welcomed me with open arms. But I suppose I didn’t fully grasp the extent to which I had settled down until I came here and became unsettled. Now, don’t get me wrong, life was not all roses in California. A bike accident that left me out of commission for months, illnesses and, most recently, the death of my first love, felt at times like a constant, unrelenting emotional pummeling. But I felt so at home, so supported, that I was able to make it through with perhaps more ease than simply the inevitable help of time.
In these past two weeks in London I have become intimate with the feeling of being alone and not wanting to be. I have wallowed in self-pity far more than I should (which is not at all, since I am healthy, safe, well-fed, and sheltered in London where I about to be a masters student at one of the best schools for dance in the world). Perhaps some homesickness is a good thing – if I didn’t miss what I had, then I didn’t really want to have it, right? Maybe in all of my previous wanderings I did not have as much that I cherished…I didn’t have as much to lose. Or maybe I was just more zen back then and more at peace with the ephemeralness of it all. But as I get a bit older I find myself more interested in settling down (I don’t like the negative connotations of “down”, by the way), making roots, being available to my family, keeping close contact with my loved ones, etc. How damned traditional of me!
So, even if I know the reason for my somewhat pathetic state of mind these past two weeks, I still don’t like it, and I am working on pulling myself out of my rut and into enjoying every moment of this experience. I am supremely fortunate for this opportunity to expand my artistic capacity and my career opportunities. (Make no mistakes about it, I do plan on climbing up the income ladder after all this degree business is over. The identity of a “struggling artist” is a tired one, and I am no longer interested in partaking in such falsely romantic ideas. Artists, and people promoting the creation and presentation of art deserve just as much as anyone else. We are trying to make something beautiful and thoughtful in a world of ugly thoughtlessness. …Pardon the political diatribe…). I am doing my best to keep my spirits high and soak this city in in these next two weeks before my first day of classes. But I will not pretend that it is easy when it is not.
I am writing this post on a desk with a pot of pink flowers on the corner, in my bedroom in a house in Deptford, in Southeast London. I am looking out a window into a garden that is mine to sip tea in. In 15 minutes I can walk to Laban, the multicolored mega-complex of dance studios that will be my academic home for the next year. In 30 minutes I can be at London Bridge, in 5 hours I can hug my parents and in 9 hours I can be in San Francisco. You see, it’s practically like I just moved down to LA… expect in LA I would be getting a tan, and here I’m getting rained on….. 
