And on the seventeenth day, she vaccuumed.
The schedule of days past has included morning check-ins at the local Internet café, fingers crossed for someone getting in touch to offer a job, and then, eventually, my laptop battery running out, and then me running out, too—except my running out involves running out under blue skies, the sun on my neck, and new discoveries every day.
’Round by the University of London, surprises behind open windows.
At Harvey Nichols, a Cacharel jacket to make a single girl speak aloud in public: “I. need. this. now.” A hood, toggles, polka-dots outside, flowers inside. Three-hundred-and-seventy-five pounds of pure longing.
On Brick Lane, curries and barbers, and the street names in Bangla. The entryway of the Taj store smelled of ripe mangoes. Inside, fat garlics and fruity tobaccos; aluminium pots and pans; and spices and chutneys and dhal in orange, green, warm yellow.
In dero-trendy Shoreditch, skinny jeans and Joan Jett hair on boys and girls, dark eyebrows and unplaceable Euro accents, and smoke rising off burgers on an open grill down a cobbled alley.
My mind is going crazy playing that Cayce Pollard game: It’s like the Lower East Side, except not. It’s like DUMBO, it’s like Chelsea, it’s like Williamsburg—except not.
It’s not home, is it?—but I suppose it’s early days yet, and I guess I don’t remember those first weird, unbalanced moments in New York either. Here’s what I do know, though: every night he plays the guitar ’round the other side of Covent Garden market, and people dance, and people walk by, and mostly we sit and listen.
In any case.
Today I am home until the UPS guy comes to deliver...well, jeez, I don’t know anymore. These are boxes I packed back in May, boxes that sat in Brooklyn till two days ago. But soon they will be here, and I—I know this much—I will have CDs! Books! Las Vegas cowboy boots!!!
And then, people, then we’ll be cookin with gasoline.
The schedule of days past has included morning check-ins at the local Internet café, fingers crossed for someone getting in touch to offer a job, and then, eventually, my laptop battery running out, and then me running out, too—except my running out involves running out under blue skies, the sun on my neck, and new discoveries every day.
’Round by the University of London, surprises behind open windows.
At Harvey Nichols, a Cacharel jacket to make a single girl speak aloud in public: “I. need. this. now.” A hood, toggles, polka-dots outside, flowers inside. Three-hundred-and-seventy-five pounds of pure longing.
On Brick Lane, curries and barbers, and the street names in Bangla. The entryway of the Taj store smelled of ripe mangoes. Inside, fat garlics and fruity tobaccos; aluminium pots and pans; and spices and chutneys and dhal in orange, green, warm yellow.
In dero-trendy Shoreditch, skinny jeans and Joan Jett hair on boys and girls, dark eyebrows and unplaceable Euro accents, and smoke rising off burgers on an open grill down a cobbled alley.
My mind is going crazy playing that Cayce Pollard game: It’s like the Lower East Side, except not. It’s like DUMBO, it’s like Chelsea, it’s like Williamsburg—except not.
It’s not home, is it?—but I suppose it’s early days yet, and I guess I don’t remember those first weird, unbalanced moments in New York either. Here’s what I do know, though: every night he plays the guitar ’round the other side of Covent Garden market, and people dance, and people walk by, and mostly we sit and listen.
In any case.
Today I am home until the UPS guy comes to deliver...well, jeez, I don’t know anymore. These are boxes I packed back in May, boxes that sat in Brooklyn till two days ago. But soon they will be here, and I—I know this much—I will have CDs! Books! Las Vegas cowboy boots!!!
And then, people, then we’ll be cookin with gasoline.
posted by stellou at 10:51 AM
5 Comments:
Thank you for clueing me in to the fact that Brick Lane actually exists and isn't just the title of a Monica Ali novel (which, in my own defense, I haven't read).
Faster start writing your own novel about your own neck of the woods in Londers!
Cowboy boots! You'll be walkin then!
Have you had a scotch egg yet?
tym: YAH! brick lane. my mother said approximately the same thing. and yet NO ONE seems to actually have read monica ali. haha
saffron: hullo, darlin! i have now walked!!! all day saturday, and man, i am breaking those boots in as much as they are breaking me in. :-)
still no scotch eggs--not that i was keeping an eye out for them. um...actually...what's a scotch egg?
oh my. well on the screen they may sound gruesome, but it is a must try at least once - kind of like poutine.
a scotch egg = a boiled egg + wrapped in sausage meat + crumbed + shallow fried. I had mine with a serve of home-made tomato sauce once. but i must confess i haven't had one in about 'bout 5 years!
Post a Comment
<< Home