Moving house, finding Home

I can't believe how quickly time moves. Has anyone else noticed this?

I've been meaning to write for the past week, but it's difficult sometimes to kick my own butt into writing. It's pretty ironic (well, less ironic than hypocritical), considering how uppity I get when my friends haven't blogged in a WHOLE THREE DAYS or something, but that's neither here nor there.

Let's start with upcoming events and then work backwards: tomorrow we move into our new house! Which means that tonight and tomorrow morning will be a flurry of cleaning and packing, and the next week will be a mess of settling in and buying cutlery, pots, pans, and toilet paper. It's not at all real to me. In no way have I integrated the fact that at this time tomorrow I'll be moved into a new room all the way across the city. Similarly, I've only slightly taken into consideration that the weather is getting colder and wetter, and starting on Monday I'm going to have a 10mile cycling commute into work. Having only just gotten over a cold, you can see why this might make me a bit wary... if I allowed myself to think about it, that is. But at the moment, it seems, I'm content to ignore the upcoming insanity and carry on as though nothing is changing.

In my defense, I think I've earned my lassez-faire attitude towards our new home. This is because, over the past five days, I've put an inordinate amount of stress and energy into our soon-to-be-old home. It's a long story, but the short version is that the guy who was in charge of finding new tenants for the house didn't find ones for immediately after the current people (myself included) would be leaving, and when the landlady returned from holiday and found out, she freaked. As a result, there's been a lot scrambling to cover the holes, financial and physical, left behind, and most of the scrambling has been done by me (though Pablo has been very helpful.) It's actually not that bad - on closer examination it turned out there were only one or two rooms/weeks of rent that were unaccounted for, and so all is not lost. There were just a couple of hours there where I allowed myself to shake my fist at the heavens and be a drama queen. (And to secretly think "I told you so," because I totally saw this coming. But anyway.)

Regardless, most of the house drama will be behind me within the next few days (knock on wood), simply because I won't be living there any more. I will miss the house, though. Ana Mirtha, Javi, and Baerbel have been staying with us for the past week since Natali and Agnese have been in Italy and Jed and Rebecca have moved east, and it's been particularly cozy of late. Last night was Ana Mirtha's birthday, which called for cupcakes, and every other night this week has followed the pattern of dinner, movie, bed. I hope this next house will feel as much like home.

Speaking of the shifting of homes, I visited Dublin last weekend. It was... I don't know. It was a weird weekend. I mean, as always it was great to arrive in a familiar city and see lovely familiar faces in the form of Will and Simon and Cian and Conor and Kate and Nika, but I could've timed it better. I mean, the whole point of flying out was to see Will's show, and with working during the week the only time I could go was Saturday, but Saturday was their closing night and the final weekend of the Dublin Fringe, which essentially meant that everyone (understandably) wanted to go out and party and talk about the Fringe and the Dublin theatre scene and a bunch of actors I don't know and shows I hadn't seen. Which is completely understandable. And I should've seen it coming. But I didn't, and as a result I felt a little left out. Not willfully excluded, just sad. It drove home (no pun indended) the point that Dublin isn't my home anymore. Add onto this state of affairs a general lack of sleep, and you get an emotional Isabel valiantly fighting off tears in a pub as she realises that she doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere at the moment.

And it's true, I think, that there's nowhere I particularly belong at the moment. I mean yes, the sentiment is a touch melodramatic (as am I, let's face it), but hear me out. I think this explains a lot - from not being particularly homesick for Minneapolis as such to not feeling completely At Home in London - there's nowhere in the world that I feel that I Must Be at the moment, where I Belong. And there's immense freedom in that, but there's also a fair share of sorrow. I was certainly feeling the sorrowful part of it this weekend, when I very much felt on-the-outside-looking-in for most of it. But Will gave me some excellent advice when I shared my sense of loss with him, which I'm trying to implement these days and I think will help me through the year: that it's ok to be sad, but it's important to share it. Not to swallow it if it's in your throat, not to smile if the smile's not truthful. It's simple advice, but true, and a truth I need to be reminded of. (In fact, I've been reminded of it before - by Gemma, when I was in Uganda. My dear friends do know me well.) This reminder to be true to myself ties in with all the self-discovery and growing up that keeps piling on this year - that learning to believe that I am enough, that learning of confidence that builds others up with me and doesn't necessitate a hierarchy, that being ok with how I am when I am whatever I am. I get the sense it's a life-long lesson, and I'm hoping I'm up for the climb.

I also realised this week as I was paging through some old blog entries that I never wrote about the individual performances we did at the end of the year. Basically, we learned 20 movements over the course of the year (some straight-up mime, some gymnastic, some simpler and more esoteric) and for our final evaluation each person had to create their own choreography consisting only of these 20 movements (and each one only once) and then perform it, solo, in front of the faculty and their classmates. The reason I bring it up now, is because I think my presentation was one time that I was able to drop all the excess baggage, all the commentary and the flourish, and just be myself, and the movement, and the calmness onstage. I got the best feedback I've ever gotten, and the best feedback I heard, and it was wonderful because I was finally able to show something I always knew was there.

So maybe that's the moral of the story. That it's there, whatever "it" is - a home within myself as well as a Home out there in the world. It just takes a little digging, a little searching, a little hope, a little faith. And at the end of the day, chances are that it will have been right here, in my heart, in my hands, all along.

This post is for Janna...

... because sometimes she's poor, and sometimes she's forced to do algebra, and sometimes her uterus decides to make life difficult, and sometimes life just ain't easy and she feels frustrated and weepy and sobby...

but she's always brave, and strong, and kind, and generous, and wacky, and fun, and one of the best friends a girl could have, and I love her very much.

Crazy kids with their energy!

I've decided I'm not necessarily cut out for working a nine-to-five. Don't get me wrong - my job is fine. It pays the bills. But it doesn't particularly interest me, and it's not something I particularly enjoy. Even more importantly, I think it's making me older than I am. I mentioned this recently in an email to Anisa - it's like I get home, and I have no energy to be fun. My housemates are being raucous and playful and instead of having fun with them, all I want is to curl up with a glass of wine and about three episodes of Heroes. How lame is that? (Not the Heroes part - Heroes can do no wrong. I mean the no energy part). You'd think that someone who complains as much as I do about not having many close friends would be able to make an effort to rectify the situation by hanging out with folks, but apparently I use work as an excuse to be anti-social. My sense of play is hiding and I have no energy to go seek. Lame, lame, lame.

The good thing about being the only one in the house who's a nine-to-fiver is that I end up with about five housewives as a default. Several times in the past week I've come home to a chipper Karim, Carrie, and company saying, "We're making dinner!", and then regaling me with the menu of a meal I'll shortly be devouring. This (real) sceneario plays much more nicely into the adult fantasia. I don't like the "I'm tired and no fun" parts, but I do like having dinner made for me, yes I do.

The funny thing about this whole "ew, I feel so old and grey and stuffy and boring, what a gross life" crisis that I've been going through this past week is that it only takes one night out for me to realise that my life is still in my control, as helpless as I sometimes behave (and I think we can all agree I've been doing more than my share of whinging this summer). Last night I biked straight from work to the Barbican, where I met up with Theo and we grabbed dinner and then saw the Complicite show. The show was a little disappointing, but I'm still glad I saw it, and it was nice to bike home in the cool night air to round out my 15 mile day. The whole out-and-about thing snapped me right out of my funk, and the biking gave me plenty of energy to stay up chatting and eating rose, mango, and cardamom-with-pistachio-and-almond ice creams with Rebecca, Jed, Natali, and Agnese once I got home.

Speaking of biking, I have another bike! This is the second one I've gotten from the used bike store, and I think this one may be the keeper. It's not a racer, but it's lighter and faster than the other one, and it's been working out great for the past week. If yesterday's day of biking was any indication, girl's a little trouper. Yes, she's a girl. I've come up with a name, too, but I'm not going to share it until it's official.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it again - biking in London is awesome. I was reminded of this yesterday when I headed into the West End from work and, while biking down Constitution Hill through Green Park, looked up to see Big Ben rising above the trees ahead. Sigh. I love Big Ben. And then I cycled past Buckingham Palace. You know, like you do. Then Trafalgar Square. There's nothing quite like cycling past internationally known national monuments. It's really fucking cool.

Tonight I fly to Dublin for 48 hours. Will is starring in a production of Caligula for the Dublin Fringe that Conor's directing, Cian is producing, and Simon Ashe-Browne is acting in. How could I say no? It'll be good to have the weekend away - things are going to get crazy next week with moving into the new place, and... well, just moving into the new place, I guess. But that's plenty of crazy for me.

Smells like Autumn

Today is a crisp, clear, chilly day that makes me think of home. It feels like a Macalester day, a Dunns day, a day when you're driving down River Road with the windows down even though it's far too cold for it, and you round a corner and suddenly all the trees are aflame with colour, and it takes your breath away.

I love this weather, but I'd love it more if I owned more sweaters. Time to hit the charity shops.

Of House and Heroes

Well, we put down a deposit for the house. (Yes, that one I didn't like.) I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but since I was the only one making a stink and I'm never the one who has to do the grunt-work of seeing houses anyway, it seemed to make the most sense that I go with the crowd on this one. There's more to say about that, but not online. I just wish I knew how much of my unhappiness at the moment is real, and how much of it is sickness/stress/fatigue/hormones.

Yes, I have been battling all these four (sickness, stress, fatigue, hormones) for as many days, which has meant that I have not been the most rational or most pleasant person to be around. Several crying jags (more or less unwarranted) and three loads of laundry (very warranted) later, I'm feeling better, albeit still sick/stressed/fatigued/hormonal. But there is solace to be found in this state of melancholy, and that solace is....

HEROES!

I'm totally hooked.

Karim knows about this website where you can watch all the first season episodes online for free, and after less than a week I'm already up to episode fifteen out of twenty-three. It's all very exciting. I'd tell you where I am in the sequence of events but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Let's just say that the end of the last episode I watched last night had me grinning and going, "No WAY! NO WAY!!" Ah, the carefully-planned serendipity of prime time television series. Ah, escapism. Ah, Heroes.

A real-life hero of mine, Ana Mirtha, returns to London tonight!, much to my delight. She is so full of light and joy, I can only imagine she will dispel these clouds that have been lurking around me of late. Again, the house on Haycroft will be stuffed to the brim, and I will be happier for it.

False starts

I'm back at work after taking a sick day as a result of my headcold, and I'm starting to wish I'd taken today off, as well. It's been a bit of a frustrating week. The house in Leyton has fallen through due to the fact that none of us have UK-based rent guarantors, and the other house that Carrie and Karim found (which was cheaper and closer to school) I didn't like. They're going to try to set up some more viewings today but, as ever, I won't be able to go with them. I feel bad, because they were ready to take this place until my sick-ass self came in and was like, No. It's plenty of space, it's just in this very unpretty brick-and-concrete complex of boxy flat/houses and has textured hotel wallpaper and feels so unwelcoming to me. But now I feel like a problem child, and like I'm making life difficult for everyone around me. I wish I could tell how much of my reaction to this house was me genuinely not liking it, and how much was just me being sick. Because house-renting is one situation where I feel like I shouldn't settle for something less than what I'm happy with, but I don't want to dismiss it for the wrong reasons.

I also bought a bike this week, which would be cause for celebration but for the fact that I don't think I like it either. It's this chunky little road bike which was cheap and works great, but is a bit heavy and slow for my taste (which makes a difference, especially as I'm going to be biking 15-20miles a day once school starts). Luckily, they have a no-problem return policy, so I think I'm just going to trade it in for a slightly pricier, much faster one tomorrow. It's frustrating, though, to think you have a problem sorted and then to realise that you don't.

Maybe I'm just being a princess this week, and pouty and way too difficult to please. Maybe it's the headcold. Regardless, I'm hoping that by this time tomorrow, the knots will have started to untangle themselves, and my mind and lungs will be more clear.

Oh no!

And now I have a headcold! Gah! And every itty-bitty muscle and fiber in my Whole Body is sore and knotted and stiff! Ack!

Plan for tonight:
Chicken noodle soup (or equivalent)
Cup after cup of ginger tea
Youtube or DVD
Bedtime at 8pm.

Engage.

Bleagh.

You know those days where you're just generally pissy and irritable for no reason?

I'm having one of those days.

I guess I was tired

I overslept this morning by a good two hours, but in exchange for being late to work I got a dream that I wouldn't have traded for anything. I was in the backseat of a car, driving through a green and unknown city with a man I [have] love[d], talking and laughing and catching up and working out the time difference between London and Florida. I showed him my scrapes and bruises from my cycling accident; he introduced me to his friends. They were all very impressed. I pretended to be a campy gay man, and we all laughed.

And as much as it sucks to wake up and realise you were meant to be in the office ten minutes ago, the glow I got off that dream was the best way to start the day.

In other news, the bike is broken again. I've decided to stop calling it "my bike" because I am officially relinquishing responsibility for it. Besides, Maria lent it to me for the summer, so technically it's hers, and she found it in a bush outside a prison. So. Apparently the bottom bracket needs to be replaced, and I've decided it's just not worth it. So happy early birthday to me, I'm going tomorrow after work to buy my own used ride, graciously funded by my parents. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

This weekend also marked the finding of a house for next year! While I was at work on Friday, Karim, Carrie, and Baerbel pounded the pavement all day looking at places, and then took me to see the pick of the bunch on Saturday. It's kinda far away - it's in Leyton, which is Zone 3, and it will be an hour commute into work by either tube or bike (though only a 15min cycle ride to school) - but the house is lovely and newly refurbished and furnished and CHEAP. We'll probably be paying less than £290pcm each, and we'll have loads of space. I'm very pleased. The landlady is very nice and very involved, and we're all currently trying to clear the necessary hurdles with finding guarantors, filling out the necessary paperwork, etc. Hopefully we'll be moving in on the 1st! How exciting! And plenty of space means plenty of room for visitors...

Other than that, I saw Peter Brooks' The Mahabharata at the Barbican yesterday, complete with post-film discussion with the man himself, and worked Saturday night. Tonight I have my induction class at the Circus Space. And then I go to sleep - perchance to dream?

Ramblings from a rambler

I found myself thinking this morning about Megan Erickson, a really incredible woman and Peace Corps volunteer that I met in East Africa. She was my age, and conversational/fluent in Swahili, and spoke the local tribal language as well (she was based in Rombo district in Tanzania, about halfway up Mt Kilimanjaro), and she was kind, and funny, and so capable and mature and, well, a woman. I don't feel like I've necessarily earned the title "woman" yet, but this woman definitely had. Maybe that strength of self has something to do with living on your own in a developing country for two years trying to make the world a better place.

It's funny: in a lot of ways, living in London has been harder for me than living in Uganda (though this thought could easily be the result of fuzzy memory.) I do have the sense that I've learned more about myself at LISPA than I did volunteering. But I also think that I felt like I was more myself in Uganda. How does that work, I wonder?

It feels sometimes like the older I get, the more I have to face up to my insecurities. The funny thing is, these insecurities are often ones that I don't remember ever having before. The one that comes up most often is needing to be liked, wanting to be loved. This comes up a lot in my interpersonal relations (especially here, where I wouldn't say that I've found a "best friend" per se, the way I tend to find them in other places and eras [high school, college, Dublin]). It's strange, a year into my friendships with a lot of these people, to still feel that they're largely casual friendships. Especially since I so often desperately want something deeper, more profound. And I often end up feeling like these people are "so much cooler" than me, and feel a little weird around them because I want to be their friend, even though I am their friend, and I'm always playing low status and rarely really just relaxing and genuinely being myself. Speaking to Gemma on the phone the other week, I said, "I think I need to stop trying to find my place in order to find my place." And that's it, really. I need to just be, and have faith, and everything will fall into place.

I realise, too, that I project the image of being enormously self-sufficient and independent a lot of the time (or at least since I moved here.) I'm always running around and doing things, and if I can't find someone to go with, fuck it, I'll go by myself. And there's nothing wrong with that - in fact, I think it's important sometimes to push myself in that way. But it's important, too, that I acknowledge that if I need people in my life to a greater degree, I'm the one who needs to make an effort in that direction, too.

That's another reason it's been so lovely to be living with so many people this summer. I'm surrounded by people all the time, and I love it. I'm an extrovert, what can I say.

The other icky side of the "needing to be liked" thing is that I think that it sometimes stands in the way of my being a good performer - or rather, the best performer I can be. I truly believe that I have the potential to be a great performer, but I can only unleash that potential when I get over myself and ideas of how I should be, and get over other people and ideas of what they think of me. I'll never be able to achieve that true transparency of great performers until I let everything else fall away and just let myself enjoy, and breath, and listen, and be.

Hmm... I'm sensing a pattern here.

This summer has been so great, because it's given me the space to think and absorb these experiences of myself over three continents and 18months. There's nothing particularly ground-breaking or new about these thoughts, but I haven't been able to articulate them all in quite the same way and in the same space before, and I think that's valuable. Not that this is the most articulate self-examination in the world, but that's not the point. This is for me more than anyone.

In this moment, I'm thinking that something else that might be important for me is to stay in London after I graduate. I'll probably change my mind. Most likely more than once. I don't even know if it would even be logistically possible to stay here. But it may not be the time to come back to Minneapolis after just one more year. I get the sense that I still haven't figured out who I am away from that home yet, and I'll need more time to figure it out. But who knows, really? Sometimes I look at all the people I love who are there, and all the amazing art and community and joy that city has to offer and I can't wait to get back and be a part of it all. So I guess I don't know (another recurring theme). Everything is possible. The only thing for it is to wait and see.

The bike-master, now that it's fixed

Man, sitting in front of a computer all day just sucks the life outta me! I keep meaning to blog, but can't seem to scrape together a sufficient amount of energy. Forgive me, then, this rather brief and boring post.

So remember how I mentioned that my bike had a flat tire (again) so I didn't ride it all last week? On Saturday I finally had the time to walk it to the nearest bike shop (a little over a mile away) and have them take a look at it. Turns out that my new front tire didn't have a seal all the way around the opening for the air gauge-thingy, so there was this little piece of metal poking out that was systematically puncturing all of my innertubes. (Thanks a lot, assholes who sold me said defective wheel and didn't notice the first time I took it in for a flat tire. Consider yourselves named and shamed. Though I suppose, in fairness, they did change that first tube for free... well, whatever. These guys are my bike heroes from now on.) But now it's fixed! And so to celebrate I biked ALL OVER LONDON all weekend long. I clocked almost 35 miles in two days. And no flat tire in sight! Woo hoo! Other highlights of the weekend included stumbling onto the London's Fittest Firefighter contest in Covent Garden, having a picnic lunch in Hyde Park with my dear friend Becky of SPW fame, and getting my hair cut for the first time in (ahem) a year.

A year.

I'm so bad at general girl pretty-maintenence things. Seriously, I don't even know how to apply eyeshadow correctly. I'm a failure at being gendernormative in the appearance-upkeeping sense.

But that's neither here or there. Monday came and went largely without incident; last night I saw this awesome lady, who has previously sang with the Polyphonic Spree and played with Sufjan Stevens. She is so so cool, and the venue was so so tiny, and the tickets were so so cheap, and we were so so close. Honestly, could've shined her super shiny shoes from where I was standing, mouth agape, staring at this awesome lady. Everyone check out St Vincent. And know when you listen to her stuff that it is all her. It was just her onstage with a guitar, about eight different pedals, two microphones, and some crazy drum/sample machines. She is one crazy multi-taskin' talented lady. I had a great night.

It also just felt really good to feel like I was taking advantage of this city. My friend Seiriol has a show going up at the Barbican that I'm hoping to see this week or next, plus the new Complicite show. Despite the fact that my shoulder is still a little stiff from time to time, I've booked my Induction Class at The Circus Space for next week so I can start taking acrobatics classes. I'm biking more than ever (close to 20 miles yesterday), and I've got lots of ideas of how to fill my time when I'm not at work. It's only when I'm at work that I get a little crabby, a little restless, a little blue.

Also on the horizon: the house-hunt. Wish me luck.

The moment you've all been waiting for

Thanks to the support of Kevin Obsatz, Avye Alexandres, Sam Morrison, my parents, and Dante Culpepper, and in honour of Erin Schlabach's 30th birthday, I am a rock star.

Enjoy.