Reclaimed Spaces

I was watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty tonight and marvelled at the initial scene where Walter, played by Ben Stiller, is balancing his checkbook. That someone might have $7000 in savings - that, in fact, one could be well-off enough to have the impulsivity to take an impromptu trip to Greenland whenever they wanted - is simultaneously exciting and infuriating to watch.

Greenland was the first place, other than back home to the UK, that Arden and I set our hearts on visiting. There’s this unremarkable little town called Kangerlussuaq that has 98% visibility of the northern lights between November and March, and it’s one of those natural wonders that falls into Serious Bucket List Territory for me. All that said, I’m resigned to the fact that this might not happen for a few years - I am unlikely to land myself with a high-paying job anytime soon, and the first opportunity we get I want Arden to see the places I grew up. I am resigned to putting sentimentality before wonder.

Maybe that’s all a little internalised, though. I am not Ben Stiller’s age; by the time I get there, I hope to have seen considerably more than Greenland. I’m also lucky enough to have already travelled a great deal, even if the vast majority was within European boundaries; really, I don’t have anything to complain about. This all likely comes from the insecurity of pursuing another job hunt, and only having the sort of income that can sustain basic luxuries in the meantime.

I’m still figuring all of this stuff out, nearly nine months in. How to be part of the American workforce, which functions in a different way to the British workforce (here, the pay is lower and yet everyone seems to be smiling); how to absolve myself of the guilt of living rent-free in a house that is not my parents’; how to be a good husband; how to deal with the strange, unbidden dreams of people and places back in England that bubble up at night and leave me feeling uneasy.

That last one is more recent. The truth is that the sudden cutoffs I experienced in the UK happened long before I emigrated. There were plenty of people whom I stopped pursuing socially, then realised that if I wasn’t pushing, no-one was stepping in to push for me. It was jarring. There were some really close friendships that ended that way, and it makes you question yourself; how much of that closeness was just perception and one-sided sentiment? 

Does anyone like me?

These are the kinds of crazy questions that sound laughable when stated soberly, but take on a deranged sensibility when you’re approaching them through the haze of sleep. I don’t have childhood demons, but sometimes there are ghosts.

All of this is to say that I wrote tonight, for the first time in weeks, and it feels great. I’m not sure what was stopping me. Writer’s block, I think, is more a case of finding whatever excuse you can to put something off; in the past, it might have been the terror you get when sitting in front of a typewriter and seeing a blank page, but nowadays I think it’s more a problem of knowing that you can tab over and see multiple feeds full of the words of other people, or open Netflix and watch any of hundreds of movies and TV shows, or start to clear a backlog of (and I am not exaggerating here) 400 video games you somehow legally accumulated over less than four years.

There comes a point, I think, where you have to quietly and deliberately put all of that stuff down. Yes, the backlog will increase while you go away. I opened up Netflix after I finished writing a couple of pages, and discovered that Richard Ayoade’s second film, The Double, is now available to stream. I will watch it, but I need to abandon the idea that I have to somehow clear it out of the way. Media is just stuff - it’s fulfilling, and it’s art, and it’s hundreds of thousands of people making things with resources you could never hope to gather, but there has to be a line between their stuff and your stuff. You have to allow space for your stuff, otherwise there’s nothing that contextualises their stuff. You just absorb all their color without reflecting anything back.

So I carried on writing my outline, and I think it’s getting somewhere! I am, in theory, up to Chapter Nine of maybe around Twelve, and once it’s done and redone I will sit down and actually try to write this bizarre first novel of probably two. And I will keep at it, even if I find a job that forces me to work sixty hours a week. I will make the time. I need to try and remember that even though anxiety about writing feels terrible, when I actually sit and write, it feels golden.

2014-02-28

First the dull stuff: a few changes to the way this website looks. (Yes, I know that most of you are reading this via the Tumblr dashboard. You should have a look. It’s really rather pretty.)

This is the most obvious one: after a very long time sticking to my Tumblr URL, I’ve gone back to the address I started using back in 2008. I’m not sure why. Lack of shame, maybe - I don’t think there’s anything here that’s too incriminating. Still strange that family members are reading this, but I was never really going to be posting nudes. So we’re okay.

This is the new navigation bar (you can probably also make out that I’ve expanded the title from “Chris” to my full name, too - call it brand consistency, or call it the fact that it fits nicely with the links underneath). If you click the first link, you’ll be taken to the preview page for my new book (and - need I remind you again - you can sign up for updates about that here). The second goes to a redesigned version of the old page, where you can buy my last book for real Earth currency. The next two are tag pages, and the rest sort of speak for themselves.

Finally, there’s this - a few social links. In particular, that third one links to my Pinboard bookmarks, which I intend to make more use of in the coming months. There is so much to look at out there. It’s not all Buzzfeed listicles and videos of dogs being stupid and blog posts about the tech industry.

Soon after I got here, there were a couple of blizzards. We got caught in the second, after a meal at a family friend’s house. It was one of those experiences that was entirely new - we were shovelling snow so we could get the car to make the short journey home, and every yard felt perilous in a sort of slapstick way. There’s no real threat when you’re driving five miles an hour, but it’s still thrilling when you experience it for the first time. At the time, though, after a couple of glasses of wine and packed into a car with five other people, it was a ridiculous reminder that at the age of twenty-three I still have plenty of first times left.

This is all small stuff, of course. I’m getting married on Saturday. That’s so close. The nervousness keeps rendering me inarticulate, to the point where I’m sure I’ll look back on this and see it as a bit stilted and weird-sounding. But I’m excited. And happy. And nervous. Really nervous.

I got to see my family yesterday - they’re here for the week, though I won’t be seeing them that much due to all the other things currently swirling around Arden and I. It was a fairly cathartic experience. I didn’t share Arden’s terror of disappointing them, but it was still the first time that I’d encountered the confluence of those two different worlds - the people I’ve left behind, and the people with whom I now live. There’s a little strangeness in that. I think we all came out of it feeling good, though. I certainly did.

There are bursts of feeling, but there’s also a certain amount of numbness. I can be very good at planning things, as long as there’s limited emotional engagement - if I let myself worry about outcomes, or get anxious about the weight of it all, everything I need to do just sits there, undone. There are weeks to go until I really reach anything approaching a sense of completion regarding settling in this country.

It’s not depression, though. I don’t know about whether or not the potential’s there - how I’d feel if I had the mental space to really practise any degree of introspection - but it’s more like a flurry of activities replacing the regular beats that I might otherwise be feeling. I still prefer this to what came before. My worst moments with Arden are better than a lot of my average moments in the UK.

I’m excited to wear my suit. I’m looking forward to reading my vows, and eating cupcakes, and meeting the remainder of Arden’s friends. I’m excited for that first night, when we close the door and we’re by ourselves after a day of socialising and look at each other as a married couple, with no external distractions, for the first time. I can’t wait for that fact to sink in. I’m already navigating the contours of the feeling, and it seems heavy, but in the sense of a reassuring weight - the kind that feels like an anchor, rather than cinderblocks tied to your feet. Another reminder that I’ve made it home.

And then: half a dozen places where Arden will have to change her name¹; a green card application to assemble and submit; an ebook to format and publish; a whole future with no limits stretching out in front of us. That’s quite something.

There. A glimmer of something - excitement, maybe, or just air blowing past the embers of my imagination. This feels good. Lately, it’s those flickers that I have to look forward to. Soon, I’ll have room to stoke it into something bigger.

—

^{1. Addressing the vocal minority who might attempt to accuse Arden by proxy of being a “bad feminist” for taking my name: it was entirely her choice, and borne out of the fact that she has little attachment to her current surname (and a fair amount of attachment to mine). So shush. I have seen that wrinkled nose too many times by now from people who judge before they assess context, and they should know better. Also, ARF is a cool set of initials. It’s one more excuse to roleplay as sea lions.↩}

Leaving it all behind

I shouldn’t need to reiterate the background of this by now, but I will - thanks to emotions, an engagement, and an incredibly brilliant person, I’m currently a prospective immigrant to another country. By this time next year, I will be with my partner in Massachusetts, unlikely to leave any time soon. That’s a funny thing to think about. Obviously, it’s exciting, and wonderful, and the next twelve months are likely to be some of the most emotional and intense of my life, but as with any complex, excellent thing, it also throws up a few other feelings and thoughts.

I had a period where I had my heart set on emigrating. It probably hit a peak during 2008 - I’d come out of a long-term relationship, and as the haze cleared and I found myself at university with few friends and a startlingly clear mind, wanderlust set in. I saved and went to visit someone I had only ever met online, and spent two weeks on an American college campus that differed wildly from my own. I spent a fortnight in Morocco on the pretense of volunteering, only to find myself getting high on a rooftop, making friends with a postman-turned-teacher, sleeping under the stars and getting lost in a coastal resort town. I went on one last family holiday to Spain, where everything felt a little forced and it became clear that our tastes were too divergent for a close-knit excursion to have the same cohesion as in previous years.

And then, I travelled to Boston, and if there were any lingering doubts in my mind as to whether I was ready to fall in love again, that set them straight. The next year, I broke a trend, and went back again. In a few months, I’ll be going back for the last time, and staying - and that’s huge.

I’ve been trying to get a handle on what exactly it is that I’m leaving behind. Family is the obvious one. Our family is far from perfect, but it’s still very conventional. I have a little sister, and my mother and father are part of the small collective of 50-year-olds that have managed to get so far without a divorce. Open declarations of affection might as well be banned in this household, and it’s often displayed in the form of harsh pragmatism. I was pushed hard to find a job, not because they needed me to contribute, but to teach me to be self-sufficient. I was scorned during open displays of hysteria, because responding to it would only encourage me to lose grip on my life. A lot of care was put into my upbringing, and while my parents definitely got a few things wrong (something that becomes more apparent the older I get), they’re still two people that I love.

With my sister, it’s the sort of love that’s defined negatively - as in, the rage that flares up when I think of someone hurting her, or the pangs I get when I think of losing her. As it is, we’re content, and as most younger siblings are, she’s a lot cooler than me. She’ll be graduating university in 2014, assuming things don’t turn sour (and they likely won’t), and it’s odd to think that she’ll be learning to become an adult thousands of miles away from me.

There’s Joe, of course - my best friend, with whom I have an often-odd relationship, but he’s someone that I cherish and will miss no matter how often we can arrange visits and calls. I never saw myself as the sort of person who’d have decade-spanning friendships, but Joe’s become that. We stuck fast when I was twelve, and things haven’t changed since. When I think about leaving, it’s one of the things that hits me the hardest - for the first time, I’ll be more than an hour’s journey away from him.

And then there are others - a few friends who I see every week or so, and then the ones that I don’t. There are two friends in particular, both very different in terms of the way we interact and their own attitudes, and I only see them every few months. I’ll still miss them both, though. There are some friends where your relationship to them isn’t exactly defined by the frequency of your encounters.

There are little things, too. I should know how to drive by the time I arrive, but I won’t have a car, so the convenience of heading down the road for five minutes to grab a drink or some food will be lost. Normal staples will be reduced to curios and imports. I won’t have a guaranteed personal income. And there’s something bigger - there’s this curiously British atmosphere that discourages reactionary thinking and advocates caution, and it’s more of a fringe concept in the USA. In no other country on the planet have I seen a nation of people who demand that it’s their turn to be heard, without concerning themselves with things like expertise, or rationality, or diversity of opinion. I’ve been lucky to meet a few people who stray from that stereotype, but I’ve also met a plethora of people who don’t.

All of this sounds like I’m going to miss everything about this place, though, and that’s not true. Living here kind of feels like playing a broken record - if I was staying, even if I chose to progress, or train in some profession or other, there’d be this weird hollowness to it all. Of course, there are things you can fill your time with, but they’re more transient. Before Morocco, I was having the first of a few bouts of depression, and once the afterglow disappeared it came back twice as hard. With Arden, I get that same glow - except it’s a person I’m exploring, rather than a place, and the fact that we both want to get out and see the world means there’s no feeling that I’m tying myself down.

There are people, too, that I won’t miss. This isn’t quite as biting as it comes across - some, I lost contact with years ago, but I still face the paradox of living twenty minutes’ walk from them. With that, there’s a weird sense of discomfort that creeps in every now and then. A fortnight ago, I walked past someone who I hadn’t spoken to in around four years, and just kept going; the silent question was why did we stop talking? I could never go to a high school reunion. There are too many long-dead uncomfortable friendships too count, and more than a few rivalries and bitter endings. Most of them are still within walking distance, and while it doesn’t make me scared to leave my house, it does make me feel like I’m living in a town that my personality left a while ago.

Leaving, though, with all of its ups and downs, means that I’m currently in a weird state, veering between ecstatically happy and quietly introspective, abundantly happy and more decisive than ever and with creeping sadness on the fringes. I am expecting homesickness. I am expecting relief. I am expecting that leaving home will be so sweet that I won’t be forced to focus on the sometimes-bitter aftertaste, but I’ll still know that it’s there. I’m not sure I want to forget it. Some things hurt, but forgetting them can be a worse offence.