What I dismissively referred to as ‘marine layer’ the other morning turned out to be a proper heavy machinery for producing a bit of rain, then more rain, and ultimately more and more and more rain.
I’m sitting alone at home and listening to Linda. Now, how shall I describe Linda to you… Let’s say, Linda is my favourite Russian singer. To be more precise and, for that matter, honest, I have to say: Linda is the only Russian singer that I actually like. But for that I like her enough for a couple of dozen Russian singers.
(If by any freak of chance you want to LIsten to LInda, just type ‘Linda Russian singer’ in www.youtube.com, and you’ll get a proper gentleman’s set: Tanez pod Vodoi (which I’m listening to right now… ah no, it’s already Severnij Veter – an environment-oriented, folk-stylised, energetic and liberating song), Otpusti Menya, Krug ot Ruki - all excellent songs which are really worth listening to… provided, of course, you’re in that kind of mood and like that kind of music.)
Which at a certain level signifies that I’ve been home. I went home and brought some music with me, including a 15-track self-made compilation of my favourite songs by Linda.
So now that I’ve said that I’m supposed to say something about being home and coming back. Well… Home was good. This phrase is some sort of a typical English understatement which one is supposed to use when writing in English and thinking in English and means, in fact, other things. By other things I understand feelings of much, much deeper and vaster amplitudes than those which can be expressed by saying that something was good. In fact, I should say that the feeling of being home was overpowering and overwhelming sometimes; I spent, in fact, a few evenings crying from the realisation that I had to leave.
Leave what? My beautiful, beautiful room with cherry curtains and an enormous ashes-coloured desk, penetrated with subtle fragrances of I already don’t know what. Leave my awe-inspiring superstar-Mum and my super-fluffy cat. Leave my orange paper lamp and a million candles, and the guitar. Leave my nearly re-established friendships. Leave those irreplaceable feelings of comfort, peace, omnipotence, hope. Leave the earth, which gives me strength and nourishes me, which gives my feet a necessary push to move on, the safe and beautiful law of gravity.
Leave for what? A Scotland which there, on my immaculate sofa, seemed no less foggy, dim, distant, unknown and scary than it had seemed a year ago, before I had ever set foot on its (welcoming and miraculous) soil.
And yet I leave. Why?
Perhaps it has nothing to do with Scotland or wherever else I go. Perhaps it has only to do with the fact that there’s nothing back there, that the door has closed, and it did so ages ago. Perhaps if I stayed for longer than a fortnight, I would have discovered that friendships have faded, that my Mum has work to do in the other city where she currently lives, that my spacious perfect room has become too small for me, that it has exhausted itself in its capacity to feed my childhood dreams (of the Radiohead homeland and other Wonderlands), and that the sweet, sweet and bittersweet memories which I have held so dear have become scraps of paper, fading ink.
Or perhaps it has everything to do with Scotland, or rather, the abovementioned Wonderland – the Island which I had been so fascinated by as a child (well, teenager), which I got thousands times more fascinated by in my early twenties, and which has still (though I have claimed the opposite, I’m sure) NOT lifted its charm off me.
Or perhaps both. Or neither… It’s just the road, and once you step on it, there’s no turning back. You have to walk.
I could say more. Describe my little culture-shocks. Tell you about my trip back, and how we went to Manchester and Sheffield, and Damien Rice gig, and … other things, but… I think I’d rather leave it here, cause what I said above is kind of very … Dramatic, so I don’t want to spoil the effect.
I’ll only remark in passing that we’ve enrolled for graduation and now waiting for the results and then graduate on the 27 November, and then what happens God knows. And that this is one of the last posts; I’ll probably write a couple before graduation and after, and then finish it off and close this blog.
xxxxx etc
Tea. (I mean, T. – my initial)
p.s. One more thing: talking about Radiohead. They have released a new album which you can buy online or just get it for free, and then they’ll release the CD with pictures and other things (I think an LP, too), and it’ll cost 40 pounds. It’s called In Rainbows. I didn’t particularly like it, only this song, it stole my heart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlZrzHGWcdA
That’s it, I MUST disappear, because the song is now playing, and I’m afraid that in the mood this song thows me in I’ll write something I will later regret.
thanks for bearing with me
poka/bye
