#La cicatrice sul polso.

Ho una cicatrice sul polso. È lì da più o meno un anno. Me la sono procurata ad ottobre dello scorso anno nel modo piú ridicolo possibile: tirando i panni sporchi fuori dal cesto della biancheria che avevo in camera. Ero talmente sovrappensiero da non prendere bene le misure e mi sono scorticata. E pure parecchio. Era una brutta ferita, sembrava che mi fossi ustionata contro qualche ferro bollente e invece avevo semplicemente strusciato il polso troppo violentemente contro uno stupido cesto di plastica. A pensarci fa ridere.
É rimasta lì viva e aperta per mesi. Cerotti medicati, creme, garze. Le ho provate tutte, ma lei era lì. Aperta. E non accennava a voler scomparire. Pian piano ha finalmente cominciato a rimarginarsi. La pelle ha cominciato a tornare dove doveva essere e il mio polso è tornato normale. Tuttavia, lei è ancora lì. Una piccola macchia rossastra al lato del polso. Quasi impercettibile. Ne vedo ancora i bordi. La sento al tatto. Se non sai che c’è, probabilmente nemmeno la noti. Ma io so che è lí e tutto sommato mi piace che ci sia. È una specie di ricordo fisico dei miei 10 mesi a Londra. Guarisce insieme a me. Più pezzi rimetto insieme, più sembra migliorare. Mi piace credere che ora sia lì perchè non sono ancora guarita. Mi piace sperare che mi accompagnerà per tutta la vita. Perchè Londra ha preso un pezzo di me e se l’è tenuto. E la cosa mi tranquillizza. Che un pezzo di me sia rimasto a Londra non può che farmi piacere. Avrò sempre un motivo per ritornare cosí.

#C. Taylor, Londoners – Part III – Departing

I have this amazing book about London. It’s called “The Days and Nights of London now – As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long For It. LONDONERS” by Craig Taylor. It’s refreshing. And true. So, so true. I mean literally, it’s London. Whether it says positive things, neutral things or negative things. That’s London. I can’t read too much of it cause it makes me feel homesick, and by homesick I mean London-homesick. Cause after all I am a Londoner too.

So, anyway I was reading and found this passage and thought it was exactly what I needed on my departing-for-London-anniversary, so here it is. I hope you’ll enjoy it, cause I just loved it.

 

Michael Linington
Seeker

The funny thing about London is how everything feels like it’s trying to push you out. So all these people are trying to get in but the city itself and the infrastructures that have been created and the social issues, everything is trying to push you straight back out. Everyone’s trying to fight to get into the middle, but then there’s something in the middle that’s just trying to force everyone out and it’s saying, you’ve got to earn your place. But if you get pushed out then someone else instantly fills your space. We feel a bit disposable.
You can have all the knowledge in the world but if you don’t know how to function withing the city and learn the language and the codes, you’re fucked. You have to learn how things work here, for a start. First you learn the language of the city anyway, in terms of architecture and transport and things like that. You work out that Tube map and that tells you where stuff is, but actually it’s not like that at all. There’s all these other things going on. It compresses distance. I can remember thinking, okay, that’s just down the road. Covent Garden is right next Leicester Square. But then you start to learn the languages of subcultures and ways of meeting people and finding things that are going on.
In London everything feels like it’s on offer. If I can have anything, what is it that I actually want? Even choice in the supermarkets I find a nightmare. How am I meant to choose what I want for lunch, let alone what I want to do for the rest of my life or who I want to go out with? You could go out with someone and then there’s going to be a thousand other people that are ten times hotter and ten times more connected with ten times more interesting stories.
It changes you. It changes the way you deal with things. You’re presented with things changing so quick all the time and with new things being on offer and possibility. Possibility is the problem, when everything presents an opportunity. There’s a possibility withing everything. Living like that is horrible, I think, because how are you ever going to be happy? You’re not, you’re just not. Because you’re always going to be considering the other options. When do you get to the zenith? When are you in a place where you’re not wanting something else, you know? I’m living in one place now, but I think I’d really love to live in blah, blah … and then I’d probably move there and be like, this is nice and everything but I could be in a penthouse in EC1 and that would be much nicer and it’d be closer to the Tube. So when’s the top point? When are you actually happy and satisfied with what you’ve got? I guess you’re not and maybe London just likes to rub it in.
And the thing about the city as well is that it glamorizes everything. It glamorizes the full breadth of humanity. It can glamorize drug use. It can glamorize sickness. It can glamorize poverty. That’s weird, right? It can glamorize the high life but it can also glamorize the low life. It’s a meaning-making machine.
I hate that London never satisfies me. Nothing is ever enough. So it’s like always looking for the next thing or waiting for the next place to go to. It would be nice if things just stopped for a while. I just don’t feel like I could ever be satisfied there because there’s too much on offer. When do you stop desiring? You don’t, and I think I’m too stuck in the system to stop wanting.
When I was 13 or 14 I can remember coming here with my parents on a day trip and thinking, oh my god, this is amazing. Look at all these people. Everything must be happening here, this is where I’m going to end up. There’s no other option than that I’ll live in London. But then when it got to making decisions I was like, maybe I’m not good enough to go. Maybe it’s too full-on. How do you start with nothing? But now it’s like, I want more. There’s something bigger and better, but then again starting with nothing’s a horrible thought and yet living here I’m always trying to get back to the neutral, as in trying to strip away all the wanting stuff all the time. I don’t want for things materially, I want for things experimentally and maybe that’s a London thing as well.
You’re never full up. You can’t ever have enough sex. You can’t ever eat enough food. You can’t ever be excited enough. It satisfies you for a bit and then you have to start over again, and I think looking at that as a long-term projection is quite disheartening. I’m stuck in this cycle. Something that keeps delivering but can’t satisfy.
I wonder if London will ever stop existing, because you know when you look back in history there’s cities that rose and fell. Is there a limit to how many people an infrastructure can support? I just think, where does all this waste go? How can you just keep building buildings on top of buildings?