9. On space
Dear Readers,
It’s Wednesday, and I’m back at it. I’ve been thinking about space today. I live in the biggest city on this island, a sprawling beast of concrete and wire that I’ve paid rent in for seventeen odd years. I’m entering my late teens as a Londoner, if that’s a thing, and it’s been a good ride.
I’m thinking about space because all of my spaces are changing. Early last year I went to therapy. I’ve come very late to this mental health and hygiene party and gang, I’ve been missing out. What a joy it was to burn the ear off someone for an hour every week about this that and every other thing. Would recommend. Thank you, Emma. Anyway, one of things I worked out (with my therapist) was how to not allow everything the same proximity. This is a decent learning for me. I used to treat my interaction with the physical world as if I was standing at the end of a conveyor belt, tackling tasks as they tumbled off one-by-one in no discernable order. A whole heap (or hape, if you’re from backalong) of things to be done. Life, love, work, friends, family, self-care, every important thing lumped in with the mundane shite of bills and admin and things on my to do list that I never wanted to do. The Muse describes this bad craic as treating everything as if it’s equally important. She’s right, of course.
So the cure to this particular kind of nonsense is space of a particular kind. I’ve been working (and gang, it is work) on creating distance. Good distance. The conveyor belt is no more, and instead I have this buffet of choice. A smorgasbord of next things. And somewhere inside my head there’s a little version of me taking their time. Moving along the table. Looking. Breathing. Wondering. It’s not just about the next most important thing, it’s about the best most important thing. It seems to be working. Good days and bad days, you know?
The other spaces that are changing are my work space — we’re leaving patchy Hackney and heading towards curated Central – and my living space. Did you know that two small kitty-cats can completely distort the shape of where you live? Little rogues. Tiny interior architects of chaos.
And the city is changing, of course. On the bus on the way to where I’m sitting writing this I saw parts of this town that I haven’t seen in a while and how different they’ve become. Skies riven with new builds and side streets thickening with spring-day-drinkers, perennial torn-up pavements and cycling-home hordes, all so familiar but not the same-same as when I arrived. But sure neither am I — change is the only constant.
Another ramble. Thank you for reading.
Yours sincerely,
Paul