The boxes that stressed me out so badly are gone. £300 or so and they're on a truck headed to a shipping container headed to a ship, headed to Los Angeles and then in some way from thence to Menlo Park. I might see them a month after I return, or I might be lucky to see them before Christmas.
The apartment feels like a husk. Worse than a hotel room which retains its impersonalness throughout a stay; this was once home and is no more. In some ways it's worse than moving, because I haven't seen the "next home" in so long that I've had none of the visceral, animal comfort of knowing somewhere is next. Now all I have are two giant suitcases, a really large laptop bag, and a reasonable-sized backpack. All STUFFED with things.
And a luggage scale, I should mention. It seemed as I was packing and weighing and repacking and weighing and putting things into the boxes instead, that I couldn't get even just the things I came here with into the bag and be underweight. Humidity? I guess? I sure won't miss the cold drizzling rain.
Then again, I'm hoping the rain starts up as soon as I get home, to be honest. I've been watching the onslaught of burning in California from afar, watching the Valley Fire creep closer and closer to my old summer camp, watching it spread near friends in Fresno, watching it creep up the ridgeline near my Grandma's house in Twain Harte, and hoping that it stops soon. Seriously, the burnt part of California must be larger than the unburnt part at this point, and with an El Niño coming (oh god I hope it is) we're in for some big, ugly mudslides.
I hope it gets cold, and I hope it rains (or better yet SNOWS) like crazy. But... I could use a few days of summer before it starts up, if that's okay? :\
Monday, September 21, 2015
Friday, September 18, 2015
T-minus Fifteen Days
Today, I folded up my sewing table, and then lugged my lovely borrowed Bernina back to its original owner. Suddenly my apartment feels like someone else's place and no longer my home.
My life in the last few weeks has consisted of inventories and decisions about what things I want to keep and which I will leave here. I'm living more or less out of a suitcase. On Monday, they come to take anything not in the suitcases away, and put them on a boat. I may not see them again until just before Christmas. (6-12 weeks? Really?)
I have a general level of anxiety that is simply astronomical. This is far beyond my usual travel anxiety. I am trying to quell it by smothering myself in friends and last-minute research.
I'm missing Folsom. I'm missing Much Ado. California is burning. The economy is wobbly and it's freaking people out. I'm going to Houston to a huge women in engineering conference where I hope to talk to a bunch of awesome potential employers.
I'm also going to be giving another talk at Odd Salon, and possibly be teaching at Dickens. And I feel like I ought to be looking at grad schools rather than startups, or starting my own company or something.
And at the same time I'm looking out the window of this spacious, airy flat with its view of the spire of the V&A like a pinprick on the horizon, and I'm watching the clouds roll ever onwards with their particularly English alacrity and I am both homesick for California and already sadly nostalgic about leaving this place.
I think it comes down to this: I have lots of things waiting for me when I get back. But there's so little sense of place, of community. Six months of not really talking to anyone has not helped this - I now feel disconnected from the tenuous connections I had - and now I feel like I need to start over. A new living space, a new job, a new... something? Direction in life? Who knows.
Six to 12 weeks, really?
My life in the last few weeks has consisted of inventories and decisions about what things I want to keep and which I will leave here. I'm living more or less out of a suitcase. On Monday, they come to take anything not in the suitcases away, and put them on a boat. I may not see them again until just before Christmas. (6-12 weeks? Really?)
I have a general level of anxiety that is simply astronomical. This is far beyond my usual travel anxiety. I am trying to quell it by smothering myself in friends and last-minute research.
I'm missing Folsom. I'm missing Much Ado. California is burning. The economy is wobbly and it's freaking people out. I'm going to Houston to a huge women in engineering conference where I hope to talk to a bunch of awesome potential employers.
I'm also going to be giving another talk at Odd Salon, and possibly be teaching at Dickens. And I feel like I ought to be looking at grad schools rather than startups, or starting my own company or something.
And at the same time I'm looking out the window of this spacious, airy flat with its view of the spire of the V&A like a pinprick on the horizon, and I'm watching the clouds roll ever onwards with their particularly English alacrity and I am both homesick for California and already sadly nostalgic about leaving this place.
I think it comes down to this: I have lots of things waiting for me when I get back. But there's so little sense of place, of community. Six months of not really talking to anyone has not helped this - I now feel disconnected from the tenuous connections I had - and now I feel like I need to start over. A new living space, a new job, a new... something? Direction in life? Who knows.
Six to 12 weeks, really?
Monday, September 7, 2015
The Things You Miss
It's fully September now. Yesterday was the first nice bright day in a little over two weeks, and it feels like somehow during that grey, drizzly fortnight the season changed from summer to fall. I know the retailers felt it, because all of the sudden we're into the rich and muted colors of the fall collections. The trees felt it too: the London plane trees, so bare when we first arrived, so green and leafy betimes, have now begun to shed. First a few, nearly unnoticeable dry leaves skidding about. Now the light is thinner somehow, and a little wan, but it filters through the baring branches nonetheless.
Some part of me feels cheated. I don't feel like I've had a summer to speak of. I know that's empirically, emphatically untrue, given that I've been on "hols" this entire time, and that I spent a full week sweltering in a shop in Old Street, and another week sweltering in Spain, and another week cruising the Mediterranean. But those are active summers, summers without rest, summers that do not allow for such things as relaxing and taking in the views or resting a weary mind.
Besides that, I've missed all of my usual signposts of the turning year. These are the things that make me feel that Time Is Passing (tm) and without them I feel as if I'm in a shiftless limbo. I've missed May Day, two weddings, the Alameda County Fair, the whole entire 4th of July pyrotechnics season, costume college, a handful of Odd Salons and innumerable dances, picnics, and parties. As I type this - 10am London time, 2am Pacific - most of my friends are enjoying a final evening after the Temple Burn before they begin the process of teardown, return, and reacculturation post-Burning Man. I didn't expect to miss Burning Man as hard as I currently am. And that's not quite all - the Gatsby Picnic, which I attended for the first time last year and which I adored, comes hot on the heels of Burning Man. After that, Much Ado About Sebastopol, one of the few Renaissance Faires that I'll attend with gusto - also while we're still here. And Folsom Street Fair happens just before we return so I'll be missing that too.
I feel as if I'm scraping together spilt sand when I say I'm planning to make the closing weekend of the Northern California Renaissance Faire, hoping to hit Burning Man Decompression, and will definitely be going to Le Bal des Vampires. But right now I'm a little lonely, a little depressed, and extremely temporally dislocated.
As a salve, we've been trying to knock things off our touristy "to see" list, and we've been churning through theatrical shows and day trips. This weekend we got through eight things: The Banqueting House (free as we're Historic Royal Palace members), The Ben Franklin House, a trip to Harrod's, and a pub called The Grenadier, then yesterday we caught the Changing of the Guard, went down to Greenwich and saw the Painted Hall and the Observatory, then came back upriver and rode the London Eye.
We live in an area that is below the Heathrow flight path, though not in the window-vibrating sense that I remember from South City or San Jose. But every time I go outside I see a plane arcing overhead towards the west, and some part of me counts the weeks, the days, until that plane is coming for me, coming to take me away from this adventure and bring me home.
Some part of me feels cheated. I don't feel like I've had a summer to speak of. I know that's empirically, emphatically untrue, given that I've been on "hols" this entire time, and that I spent a full week sweltering in a shop in Old Street, and another week sweltering in Spain, and another week cruising the Mediterranean. But those are active summers, summers without rest, summers that do not allow for such things as relaxing and taking in the views or resting a weary mind.
Besides that, I've missed all of my usual signposts of the turning year. These are the things that make me feel that Time Is Passing (tm) and without them I feel as if I'm in a shiftless limbo. I've missed May Day, two weddings, the Alameda County Fair, the whole entire 4th of July pyrotechnics season, costume college, a handful of Odd Salons and innumerable dances, picnics, and parties. As I type this - 10am London time, 2am Pacific - most of my friends are enjoying a final evening after the Temple Burn before they begin the process of teardown, return, and reacculturation post-Burning Man. I didn't expect to miss Burning Man as hard as I currently am. And that's not quite all - the Gatsby Picnic, which I attended for the first time last year and which I adored, comes hot on the heels of Burning Man. After that, Much Ado About Sebastopol, one of the few Renaissance Faires that I'll attend with gusto - also while we're still here. And Folsom Street Fair happens just before we return so I'll be missing that too.
I feel as if I'm scraping together spilt sand when I say I'm planning to make the closing weekend of the Northern California Renaissance Faire, hoping to hit Burning Man Decompression, and will definitely be going to Le Bal des Vampires. But right now I'm a little lonely, a little depressed, and extremely temporally dislocated.
As a salve, we've been trying to knock things off our touristy "to see" list, and we've been churning through theatrical shows and day trips. This weekend we got through eight things: The Banqueting House (free as we're Historic Royal Palace members), The Ben Franklin House, a trip to Harrod's, and a pub called The Grenadier, then yesterday we caught the Changing of the Guard, went down to Greenwich and saw the Painted Hall and the Observatory, then came back upriver and rode the London Eye.
We live in an area that is below the Heathrow flight path, though not in the window-vibrating sense that I remember from South City or San Jose. But every time I go outside I see a plane arcing overhead towards the west, and some part of me counts the weeks, the days, until that plane is coming for me, coming to take me away from this adventure and bring me home.
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