Finding Wisdom, Courage and Grace on the road less traveled.
Espresso martinis, veggie burgers, caviar and champagne, in leather diner booths and gold trim tables. The strangest shi-shi, somewhat-Russian, tacky turn, over-priced dining experience ever. Well worth the shock and confusion factor on a cold Friday night.
PS: His baby pink pastel sweater matched perfectly with the pink placemats, pink waiter outfits, pink menus. And then there were the turquoise green leather seats…
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We’ve been living in East London this past week and wow, do I love it here. Compared with the congested tourist hubs of the West End (Notting Hill, Kensington, SOHO), this place feels like a gem. There are small green squares and playgrounds. Corner pubs and flower shops. Restaurants and coffee houses in converted brick factory buildings. And a sense of slow and quiet that teases at you as you walk the cobblestone streets, a quietness that’s just enough to let you feel like you’ve been transported to another world.
This city has the power to eat you up and swallow you alive. After traipsing through the buzzing pedestrian streets and rathole networks of underground tube lines, it’s nice to find a place to run away to and breathe.
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Last night the boy surprised me with a night at the Royal Albert Hall to see Classical Spectacular, a classical music concerto on steroids. Lasers, smoke, fireworks and 3000 fellow senior citizens clapping and singing to British military tunes.
It was the strangest, most enjoyable display of cultured art I’ve ever experienced.
I want to learn to play the violin!
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Sometimes, there are moments of such beauty in this city that you are caught completely off guard. It has so much to offer. Layers upon layers of surprise and delight. This taken on a walk through the Little Venice canals in Maida Vale / Saint John’s Wood.
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A well traveled friend stopping by London a few weeks ago described this city as obnoxiously expensive. And that it is. I remember when I first transferred here back in 2007 how hard it was for me to adjust to the prices. A box of cereal converted to $5. A litre of milk $3.50. A McDonald’s big mac meal $7! A movie ticket the equivalent of $24!!! It was (is) madness! Friends at work told me that if I had any hope in enjoying my time here, I’d have to STOP converting things in my head and just think in pounds. That’s easy to do if you’re earning in pounds but if the monthly paycheque is coming in dollars, a $24 movie ticket is a hard thing to swallow.
A few weeks ago, the mayor launched a London bike scheme – a network of publicly available bicycles strategically placed throughout the centre of the city similar to programs in Paris and Barcelona. Great idea, right?! I thought so too, until we saw the prices! It’d make more sense to purchase your own bike at these rates!
On the other hand, obnoxiously expensive can also be ridiculously entertaining. Last week, we visited The Wonder Room at Selfridges and as I licked the display cases of jewels upon jewels of sparkling beauty, a very nice sales lady offered to let me try on a £14,000 ruby encrusted, rose gold, Boucheron seahorse cocktail ring. Be still my heart! Why of course I’d love to try that on! In fact, I’m happy to adopt the entire animal line and house them on all ten of my fingers. Obnoxiously beautiful. And right next to it: a £365,000 5-karat diamond ring. I thought they’d made a mistake by adding a few too many zeroes. Apparently not. As lovely as a stone like that would be, I’m not quite sure I could wrap my head around the fact that I’d be wearing the equivalent of the expense of a small mansion on my finger. Apparently, a client was coming in later in the day to purchase it. Heh. I didn’t want it anyway. Too gaudy for my delicate little fingers 
And then there are the ridiculous cars and the £7000 car wash that they need. And not to mention the crazy hotels and eating venues and shopping streets. This place looks, feels, sounds and smells like the most liquid and gratuitous market in the world. There isn’t a hint of the recession here. And that’s scary!
It’s been a fun few weeks perusing the swank neighbourhoods and shops in this city. And sometimes it just makes me laugh. A year ago, I was trying to decide which hole in the ground to pee over in Africa: the one with the spider on the wall or the one with the turd on the floor. A friend once told me that I should push to experience a wide breadth of what the world has to offer and wide that experience has been thus far!
Perspective.
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I’ve consumed more alcohol in the last month in this city than I have over the last year. The drinking culture here is intense. Not only have I been to more bars and pubs in the last few weeks than at any other time, but I’ve never been more busy. It seems there is an endless list of people to see and meet. I feel like the most popular kid in school. It is exhausting.
London is a town of many acquaintances. It is a hotbed of friends-of-friends, long-lost cousins, workmates, visiting workmates, friends of your new significant other, gym mates, dance class mates, relatives passing through. There’s always someone stopping over during a work trip, stopping over between flights, stopping over just because. And sooner or later, the rule of six degrees of separation proves itself scarily and regularly true with the people that you know. Someone knows someone who knows your cousin and you should meet with them tomorrow night!
This is all wonderful and social and exciting but wow, it’s a lot of beer/wine to be consuming on a weekly basis. Here, people hardly go for dinners out. They’re expensive, they’re time intensive, they require advance planning. Restaurants are packed early and close early (kitchens usually close at around 10 or 11!). You need time commitments, a booking, a planned transport route to get everyone to the same place at the same time without risk of losing your table. Too much work. Instead, we meet for drinks. Drinks after work, drinks after dinner, drinks before the movie, drinks after the movie, drinks at multiple locations on the same street. Drinks from 6pm onwards and into the eve. And before you know it, it’s 9pm, kitchens are closing, you’re tipsy as a bat and there’s nowhere left to go but another pub. Your dinner’s worth of calories have you staring down the bottom of a bottle and there’s still another 3 hours left in the evening before the tube (subway) shuts down.
So, you drink. You toast. You order rounds and accept rounds. Of beers, of ciders, of shandies and Pimm’s. If you’re brave, you’ll try for the pub house wine and if you’re smart, you’ll try to get a side of peanuts to help neutralize the effects of litres of alcohol on an empty stomach.
Rinse and repeat. From Monday through Saturday if you so choose. And realistically, drinks every night of the week isn’t an impossible task. Actually, it’s much harder to avoid than you think. And before you know it, your diet consists of breakfast, lunch and booze. The diet of champions!
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A few nights ago over dinner, the Boy and I were talking about cities and their personalities. Places are like people. They have their own quirks, faults, assets, mannerisms. They can be moody and giving, beautiful and bland, intoxicatingly intriguing or tragic. And often times, like the most important people in our lives, we can have love/hate relationships with our favourite cities. The talk reminded me of a time in London that made me so very, very sad.
It was sometime during one of the winters I was there, around 6pm and I was on my way home from work. I often chose to take the bus in the evenings, avoiding the stuffy rush of bodies in the London Underground. Seven million people use the London transit system every single day, a mass migration of chaotic proportions. In the winters, it is mad. Wet, moist and dark. The kind of experience that leaves you feeling sweaty and shivery all at once.
Unsurprisingly, on this particular evening, the bus driver seemed to have forgotten that he was carrying a few dozen passengers in the back. He accelerated and braked like he was in a demolition derby. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Like being in a bumper car at the carnival. A middle-aged woman got on the bus and as the driver stomped away on the accelerator, the woman fell face first on the floor and broke her glasses on her nose. Blood streamed down her face while the bus charged on. A concerned stranger came over to help her up. The bloody woman screamed in protest, “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!”. The good samaritan, shocked, backed away. The whole bus was silent. The several dozen of us passengers sat there without words and watched as the woman knelt on the floor of the bus and sobbed. She sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Embarrassment, self pity and pain on her face. The whir of the bus engine and the woman’s crying was all I heard the entire ride home. I sat there staring at the floor, shivering in the winter cold dark and thought to myself, “This is the most tragic place on earth. What the hell am I doing here?”.
I thought instantly of home, of my parents, of mom’s sweet love. I needed something to balance the unforgiving darkness that stole a piece of my innocence that night. I couldn’t believe that in a bus full of warm blooded human beings, something like that could break my heart so completely. I went home to my cold flat and couldn’t shake the feeling of anonymity that had crept inside me. Why was it so hard to reach out to another human being who was hurting and why was it so hard for her to accept help?
London is a crazy place. Chaos, excitement, beauty, tragedy. It has the power to change you, for the good and the bad. I am still grappling with the crazy beautiful years that I spent there but am so much more aware of the things that had the power to break me. I’m so blessed that I left with a soft enough heart to still be able to believe in the true kindness of people, in the power of love, in the innocent possibility of fairytales. Not enough people believe in fairytales anymore. I’m glad that I still do.
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My shipment of things came in from London today. Finally. 9 weeks later. 4 boxes. 2 years of a life in London, gathered together and packed into 4 little boxes. How does that happen? How do you live 2 years of your life, 730 days, in a city on the other side of the world, and then all of a sudden decide that it’s enough? Sometimes, I wonder how I could have possibly pulled myself away. London is hard to love, but even harder to leave.
Opening the package made me smile. It was painful, happy, quiet. It made me want to cry. It smelled like Notting Hill. 84 Westbourne Grove. Flat 3. My London. It smelled of warm evenings in a candlelit kitchen. Hot showers after a hard workout. Crisp Spring mornings rushing to get to work. Oh London. How I love thee. What an amazing 730+ days of love, discovery, pain, loss, hope. Two years of crazy travel: a lantern bargained for in the souk in Cairo, a calligraphy pen from Florence, a coffee-table book of Israel, a candy dish from Dubai, blankets from Marrakesh, sea salt from Greece. And my books, my beloved books. Books that brought me inspiration, insight, escape from the winter cold: William Dalrymple, Ann Michaels, Seth Godin, Anais Nain. The Rough Guides to China, Argentina, Italy, Paris, Barcelona, Portugal. The Hedonist’s Guide to London, Dubai. Colouring books from the Tate, origami paper from my favourite art store in SOHO, Moleskines for French vocabulary and business ideas and London dining haunts.
I remember.
Snow in February. Photo night at Shunt. Walks along Southbank. Dinner parties. Cheap Tuesday movie nights. Black dress evenings. Jungle rain. Falling in love.
I found an unsent letter in my Drafts box, dated July 25th, 2009:
Dear London,
I have no words to describe what I am feeling today. You can’t know how much you’ve changed me, how much you’ve lifted me up. Time with you has given me wings.
I came here unsure, broken, scared. There was so much healing to be done, so many dreams to pursue, so many strengths and fears to unlock. You revealed yourself with a stubborn slowness. In a sweet slow dance, you showed yourself. Surprise bouts of joy, serendipitous meetings, crazy sad beautiful stormy nights. The melancholy of you is beautiful. Beautiful sadness. Beautiful joy. A playground for the lost, for the troubled, for those hoping for something more, different, true. Like the dance of love, I fell slow and hard.
You have been my rock, the sad grey constant companion in this place so full of possibility. You bring possibility. Entire universes have opened in my mind’s eye because of you: lives undiscovered, places unexplored, friendships not yet made. You are layered with the hopes and frustrations and fears of millions. Dreams live and die here. Unlikely romances are born here. Chance moments that change lives happen here. I am forever different because of you.
I am enraptured by the gift of your love. And I cannot bring myself to say goodbye.
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It’s Tuesday. I’m supposed to be moved out of my flat by Saturday morning and hopping on a plane to Athens to see Miss Maria. I am IN AN INTERNET cafe (I still can’t get over how Dark Ages it feels, especially since I worked for THE tech company just a month ago!) and procrastinating all the packing that I have to do. I’ve realized that even if you’re NOT working, procrastination still applies. You procrastinate all the things that are just a tad less interesting than the rest. And right now, packing is the least interesting thing on my list of things to do.
Anyway, it is cloudy in London and even though I should be annoyed that my last few days aren’t spent in gorgeous sunshine, the immature part of me is gleeful to be leaving this city when it’s cloudy. It helps me to distance myself from the London that I will love love love forever and ever and ever.
We’ve been taking time to enjoy little bits of it these last few days. Went to the National Portrait Gallery on Monday in between errands. Last night we attended a Tchaikovsky piano concerto at the Royal Albert Hall as part of this summer’s BBC Proms. Tonight, dinner with friends. Tomorrow, more coffees and lunches and dinners and packing.
I love this city. And I always will. My mom says that it’s always important to leave a place/job on a high. You want to leave loving it so that you will always come back, so that you will always have fond memories and warm words to say when you speak of your past. This makes sense. But it also makes it a bit harder to leave. It’s hard to walk away from a good thing. But it is the necessary thing to do if you want a chance to discover a great thing.
I am nostalgic, excited, anxious, stressed. But as I take these next few days to pack up (yet again) and prepare myself for another adventure, I’ve come to realize a few important things:
A house is not a home without the love, the music, the colour and the friendship that brightens its walls. The flat is a mess and as gorgeous as it is, it no longer feels like our home. Cynthia is gone. Our pictures our down. Our books are packed. It is just another flat in great big London. It’s emptiness gives me a wonderful sense of comfort. I will always have Cynthia in my life. And we can always build a home, wherever we happen to be, in whatever part of the world.
Work is work. People are what matter. Seeing some friends from work on Monday night for birthday drinks was lovely. I’ve missed them! A lot! It was all smiles and laughter and gossip. Hugs and kisses and inside jokes. I will miss them so much. But I didn’t miss the work and I don’t think I ever will. People make our lives. Not careers, not incomes, not prestige or promotions. People are what count.
Technology is necessary. I cannot live without it ever again. Three weeks in the African bush WITHOUT Internet has been the most torturous experience ever. I feel mute without a keyboard! I tried to keep a journal but became impatient with my own writing speed. I need a computer and the Internet. Always. I am a techno-geek and so proud of it. NEVER again will I be without my own computer. It is my bridge to the world and to all the people that I connect with on an hourly basis.
Fear is the absence of Faith. My Mom always reminds me of this. I’ve been all over the place in my head these last few weeks. I’ve put myself on this ridiculous roller coaster ride. Fear and excitement. Fear and excitement. All the unknowns bring so much possibility but unknowns are scary. Then the faith kicks in and I remember that it will all turn out amazing in the end. It will be a pivotal year. I know it.
At the very core, all that matters are your family and friends. In the bitter cold of the Zambian night, with no warm water, in all the dirt and mud, I didn’t wish for my bed or 700 thread count sheets. I didn’t care about a warm house or carpeted floors. All I wanted was a direct phone line to my Mom and girl friends so that I could laugh/cry/complain about the whole absurd experience of camping in the middle of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. I missed their love and laughter even more than warm water!!!!
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And I’m back. Six airports in the last 3 weeks – 5 countries, 15 cities and many many cones of ice cream. It has been a busy few weeks of traveling, of family, of friends and of my crazy crazy mother! =) I am back feeling so energized and refreshed that I don’t know what to do with myself.
Last night I went out with a friend for a scooter ride through some of the most beautiful neighborhoods in London – Hampstead, Belsize Park, Primrose Hill. It was breathtaking. Such a warm Sunday evening. T-shirts and jeans and sandals. A walk through the park, chats on the grass, wine and dinner in a pub. Before we knew it, six hours had gone by.
London needs to be remembered this way – warm, balmy, lush and green.
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Hi there! I'm Denise. I share my name with Dionysia, the Greek god of wine, pleasure and joy. I'm a photographer, writer, marketer vagabond. I take photographs of enchanted places and the people seduced by them. This blog is an account of the wisdom, joy and grace that I've encountered along the way, and a place where I showcase some of my favourite photographs.
If you have similar stories to share, have questions about purchasing prints or just want to say hello, I'd love to hear from you!
