got a lot to not do

And just like that, my last exam of my first and only year of grad school is over. 

It's hard to describe what the last eight months have been like. Most of it seemed to pass in a blur of sameness even though everything was changing, imperceptibly, inevitably, impossibly. Time inched forward even when it felt like I couldn't come up with any spatially distinct memories to show for it. Sometime during lockdown I rediscovered that the small joys might actually feel the same as the big ones: eating earl grey crepe cake on Valentine's Day sent as a surprise belated birthday gift from my best friend; wearing new perfume to match the changing of the seasons; talking to strangers on Clubhouse at midnight or 7AM about nothing and everything. 

I started cooking dishes I craved but didn't want to get as takeaway, buying fresh ingredients from a local grocer and the corner vegetable stand in Lower Marsh. I got my first haircut after 17 months. I studied with more dedication than I ever had in undergrad only to realize how much of my discipline I still don't know, but they're going to say I'm a master of it in December anyway. I reread Joan Didion's "Goodbye To All That":

All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better, but I did not bother to weight the curtains correctly and all that summer the long panels of transparent golden silk would blow out the windows and get tangled and drenched in the afternoon thunderstorms. That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it. 

I started to like myself again in the spring. It wasn't that I disliked myself before per se, but I noticed that I was self-editing my ambitions or interests for others subconsciously before I came here. Sometimes it seems like every new city I move to has given me a chance to get closer to the version of myself I like best: to be me without apology, without compromise, despite the pandemic wrecking so many of my carefully laid plans that were years in the making. Didion was right. It counted, all of it. 

I spent a lot of time in London parks these last few months: walking around Hampstead Heath with a friend and his corgi the day after the last lockdown started because "outdoor exercise with one person outside your household" was the only government-sanctioned social activity during those long winter months; wandering through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens for hours with another friend on a rare sunny day in February, or was it early March already; studying at St James with my flatmate, a 15 minute walk from where we live for a change of scenery after all those months doing everything online at home; sipping prosecco at Regent's Park with friends from my department, to celebrate the end of Lent Term (and the lifting of restrictions to let groups of six meet outdoors—a first step back to feeling normal again). I couldn't resist putting together a quick post even though at least a dozen more shots of those rare beautiful sunny days live on rolls of film I haven't finished yet. 

It's summer here now, and even though there's so much I don't know about where I'm headed next I feel lighter already. 

I hope you are well, wherever you are.

xoxo, vivian