Bye bye Lalaland

悄悄的我走了，
正如我悄悄的來；

徐志摩 詩 1928

..............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqsyXdj_p_I
`No Surprises´by Radiohead

This is my favourite song to play on the crowded tube on a weekday morning at rush hour. Raindrops falling steadily into the silent crowd. The heads hung low, the vacant eyes, tired arms hanging onto the loose railing, chugging above the relentless track. Another Stop. The painful look in one's eyes as one by one another squeeze past bumping into you, outwards towards the jaw like door of the carriage, then as one by one they file back in...
'no alarms and no surprises, please.'

................................

From Whitechapel I walked down Brick Lane, which has become not only my favourite street in London, but perhaps the world.

I walked under the metal gate of Bangla Town, past the neon lights of the restaurants, past the curry touts who were by now too tired to say hello, instead huddling in a small group smoking cigarettes and sipping cans of imported canned soft drink. Past the giant BanglaCity Supermarket, past the old men in crispy white punjabs and skullcaps, past the window holding a group of English blokes so sloshed that they were standing up on the dining tables singing a football song.

I walked past the BBQ stand outside The Big Chill, past the Emo Boys and Shoreditch Princesses sitting on the edge of the curb, now also too tired and huddling in a small group smoking cigarettes and drinking cans imported soft drink. Past the stomping bar above All Stars, Studio 95, the over-priced vintage shops, past the dark alleys ways leading to Commercial Street, under the old bridge, and past the construction site. Past the salt beef shop, now with a small que outside, past the tiny Christmas lights of Casa Blue.

I crossed the road and come to Sebastian's house. His upstairs window glow like cats' eyes caught in the headlights. Through the half opened window, in his kitchen his collection of knives neatly lined up on the magnetic strip.

I hope he never finds out that I stand out here all the time.

................................

Everyone I love is here. Well, almost everyone. And they all fit into this tiny apartment. Candles glow for Earth Hour against the rims of the wine glasses, the amber liquid swirling against Herbie Hancock.

Wendy - whimsical, vivacious, empathetic, gifted, alluring, nurturing.

Armando - sensitive, casual, engaging, inquisitive, mysterious, unpredictable, irrisistable.

Shanti - curious, lustful, cynical, giving, wild, cautious, unbeatable, frank.

Mel B - personable, seeking, bold, impatient, wily.

Mel K - soft, optimistic, stylish, innocent, unbridled.

Claire - big-hearted, bountiful, undiscovered, sentimental, Australian.

Daivd - open, unscripted, undisciplined, generous, drifting, fun-loving, exuberant.

Jo P - unchallenged, loud, energetic, warm, confident, quirky, excellerant.

Deno - thinking, perceptive, self-deprecating, complicated, surprising, sensitive, intriguing, sanctimonious.

Tane - well-versed, observant, engaging, enthusiastic, excitable.

Keren - elegant, searching, articulate, stable.

Yuki - sweet, colourful, vibrant, curious, childlike. If I was Japanese I would be her.

.....It still feels strange that my individual friends could get along so well with each other. They are all so solitary and unique, it seemed like they should all have a planet each. But it has taken me, and most of them, good 30 years to come to this. This is a beautiful stage of one's life - mature enough and seen enough to be truly interesting, and still young enough and haven't done enough to make them incomplete and wanting. So this is pushing thirty with the propensity to over-indulge - Dancing in a second hand dress in the depth of a credit crunch, holding up a strawberry martini in a room full of people I love.
...................................

Spring sprinkled in effortlessly, and its made leaving the hardest thing to do. Gone were the relentless long nights replaced by energetic sunny afternoons of more ales on the sidewalks and chatter before the football. On the top of the double decker the view is of children bouncing their way back from school, and daffodils, neatly planted in curvy lines, dancing to and fro to Wordsworth's old poem. In the evening the best-heeled bejewelled besuited and gasping crowd at the ballet swarm around the art-nuveau style campaign bar at the opera house, and end the night hopping into a black-cab after ensuring a short mention by the private eye. On the bus in my comparatively and embarrasingly down-market outfit, I enjoyed the scenes of hens nights grinding to a messy halt and flouro jacketed and steel-cap booted men sweeping the cigarette butts and what not out of everyone's way.

Between the wild and often euphoric farewell parties I feel mildly melancholic.

There hasn't been a place anywhere else I've felt I could slip in so easily. London just absorbed me in so quickly and so graciously. I've never felt at home more here. Within a month or two of arriving here I was trudging the streets and negotiating corners as if I've know them all my life. I realised that I belong to places that are so busy and so distracted that they don't notice me. Another six months would have done me so happily, but then we are never satisfied, are we? But a fate is sealed when you arrive feeling transient, temporary and anonymous, like every other person in this town. Recyclable faces; rent-a-crowd.

How little and and how inconsequential I am. Maybe this is a little bit like dying. The self-centred perspective we all take when we try and articulate our existence or non-existence. That life would go on without me, children would grow up, people will change, building will get torn down, then they will rise again. And this very tiny tiny slice of London that's embedded into my memory will only ever be relevant to me. Yes that's sentiments. and a little bit of regret.

But my father said to me, that when our ancestors left the impoverished and repressed fishing village off the coast of Fujian in Mainland China more than 400 years ago, restless blood began to flow in our veins.... so its not something we should fight.

So I close this chapter of my book with this line from Mr Dickens:

'It was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on.'
- Great Expectations, 1861.