May
(England)
GREETINGS FROM ENGLAND!
Well, here I am, in England.
Here is what has happened so far, in brief. I spent the first week in a hostel in Kensington, it was pretty bad. Then I spent a week in a sublet in Stepney, which was much better. Then I decided it was high time I leave London, and I took the train up to Lincolnshire and am now house-sitting two labs and a cat and a giant house and an acre of garden in a tiny remote village called Gautby. I return to London on Saturday, to move into a new sublet in Hampstead, which is my favourite neighbourhood in London and is right beside Hampstead Heath and the beloved swimming ponds. I’ll be there for the summer.
Also, despite my significant efforts, I still have no job! So, if you’re at all interested, please consider supporting me by purchasing something from my online store or commissioning me. I am still on the free plan for the online store, and am only allowed 5 products, but any of my designs can be made into cards or prints, so just let me know if you want something! Also, if you know of anyone or any company looking for a professional illustrator, please send them my way. My (NEW) website is sagedunnkrahn.com. I seem to be trying to start a career as an illustrator?? D:
A MORE DETAILED REFLECTION BEGINS BELOW
When I was leaving Victoria to come to England, I had the same conversation over and over. Why are you going? Where will you be staying? What job will you be doing? I know that people were well-intentioned but it was very taxing to hear the same questions over and over, and to weather the judgment when I told them the actual answer: I don’t know.
Some people would ask me every time they saw me. “I don’t know” became more embarrassing each week, so I started to give different, more interesting answers that unfortunately weren’t true. People would come to me and say: I’ve heard all these things about your trip and I would say: no, those aren’t true. I lied.
Anyhow, I exited ungracefully, but successfully. I did it, I hopped over the pond. I am still very proud of myself for doing it. I didn’t realize that when I got here, everyone I met would ask me the same questions. Mostly, people ask me why are you here and then laugh when they realize it sounds rude. I give a lot of different answers, all of them not exactly true but not outright lies like I was telling back home. The actual answer to the question of why was not clear to me until I arrived here and are difficult to explain to randos. Below, hooray hooray, I will answer in full. Please never ask me again.
WHY DID I LEAVE?
TO COME BACK
I knew before I left that I was going away in order to come back, if you know what I mean. Actually, my return was the main thing I was thinking about as I was packing up to go. I’ve never considered settling down in any other place except the west coast. But my relationship with Victoria was becoming disturbingly resentful. Nothing wrong with Victoria, it was me. I hadn’t done my rebellious phase properly. I needed to disdain it a bit, leave. Then come back renewed.
SUFFER
Not to get too gauche, but I think of this returning thing in terms of Joseph Campbell. I know he’s not in vogue but I do like him. In the sense that everyone’s life is the hero’s journey: going out, changing, coming back changed. And then you do it again and again. It’s fun. And it’s also terrible. When I was leaving and stressed and everything, I was telling my Dad how stressed I was, and I realized: yes, but that’s why you’re doing it. Willingly suffering, that’s a part of it. Because you know it’s good for you.
CREATIVE PARTNER
I’ve started dating here, and what has become clear is a strong and unexpected disinterest in dating. It’s a bit of a let down. I came to London with dating as one of my goals, even underwent therapy to prepare myself for a more successful go. Only to get here and have no interest. Alas. It’s not even that I feel fatigued or worn down or disheartened - I think that’s the mark of caring and being disappointed - I just feel disinterested.
In the past my issue has been that I have either not found anyone I would like to be partnered with, or that after a while my interest in someone has faded. But now, my disinterest has gone a level deeper, and I seem to not want that kind of partnership at all! Most discouraging. The plan is to continue dating, in hopes that I will meet someone who ignites some kind of interest. But if the disinterest continues, I guess I’ll just have to follow my friend Elio’s wise advice: “if you don’t want to, maybe just don’t.”
All this to say, on a walk down Regent's Canal recently, I became aware that while I was not interested in a romantic partner, I DEEPLY wanted a creative partner. Someone to make art with and crucially, someone who I relate to through art.
I am, what they call, a weirdo. I like relating to people through art rather than directly - whether that’s art we experience together or make together. To me, art is romance. In the sense that art is at the level of importance that romance is to (some, most?) other people. I went to my first book club this past Sunday (Emily’s Walking Book Club in Hampstead Heath) and I loved it. I loved talking to people who I didn’t know about a book I didn’t particularly like. When the conversation turned to personal stuff (and people started asking THE QUESTION), I switched discussion partners.
I came to London, I now realize, not because the dating pool is bigger, but because the artist pool is.
FIND ENGLAND
This one is still in the works. I have recently become aware of how formed I am by English literature - and I mean the nation, not the language. It’s a frustration in my life, because when you are a fan of something, you want to join a fandom, and the english literature fandom turns out to be mostly comprised of over 50s. Which is all well and good but I have more than enough old people in my life at the moment.
I seem to have had a subconscious idea that when I got here, everyone would have read E.M. Forester and George Elliot. Of course, this is not true. But there is, as my mum says, a much higher chance in London of meeting one of those people - someone my age who wants to go to Rook’s Nest with me. Every once in a while I post a completely tone-deaf message on Lex about some stupid english literature thing. I hope I get a bite one of these days.
Finding England isn’t just about finding those people, it’s also finding the promise contained in those books: the spirit of place.
“Every continent has its own great spirit of place. Different places on the face of earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality.” (DH Lawrence, source.)
I am in Lincolnshire now, in a little village of 18 houses called Gautby. Every day I walk the dogs and feel that I have found a little of England. I found it also at Regents Canal in London, with the little canal boats neatly lined up along the bank and trailing behind them an air of wide places, a different life. I suspect that Finding England is actually impossible, that the England I know is only in my mind or maybe it did exist but is gone now. But I’ll keep looking anyways.
TO FIND OUT WHAT I DON’T KNOW
It is exciting to realize, once in a while, that the world is greater than your perception, that your perception of the world is not the world. It is exciting to do something not because you think you know what’s going to happen, but because you guess that something will happen that you could never expect.
Very exciting indeed.
I hope you’re all well. If you want to, please write to me.
-sage.