N19SG Vigil

The sunset through the dirty kitchen window steals my heart. Every spring, every summer, the skies’ florescent or a watercolored pink. I love this place. Two heavy doors that need unlocking before you approach the crumbling 1960s council flat infrastructure. Cracks visible, white paint that was never quite white, green mildew that creeps up the sides of the rough concrete. Winters when we had resident mushrooms and black mold when we couldn’t afford heating. At the bottom of one stairwell, rats scatter on a late night if you’re lucky. There’s stillness, the golden beams angle lower and lower, no longer catching my hair but now warming the blue plastic net on the scaffolding across the building next door. Slim shadows slant as the sun continues to move beyond the giant buildings that now interrupt the Kings Cross skyline. I’m keeping watch with the sun and the kitchen, sitting with wet hair and my serape from the car boot.

My third year living here, I found out that the grout in the kitchen was not in fact brown, but white. I wonder how many more secrets there are left to find in this place, no matter how hard you try the flat will never quite be clean. There’s a soft spot in my soul this side of England, the part that doesn’t try to be anything other than a simple gift. I don’t think I’ve been precious enough this week. I’ve run around, not taken stock of my heart as I leave the home that’s held me for five years. In February, three girls sat on the floor here in tears, eating Thin Mints and Snow Caps. Loneliness was the topic. In October, the night that almost got me sectioned, I collapsed and completely blacked out. Directionless, burnt out. Two years prior, November 17th with Ifetayo and Ethan, a photo captures us laughing over the stove.

The contrast between sun and sky hastens by the minute. The sky prepares for night as the fire lowers, becoming a more precise beaming sphere. Will the air in the kitchen with the varnish peeling know if I thank it? The hum of the fridge and the friction of the gravel outside soothe. Children living on the ground floor let out shouts of joy as they run around the courtyard. Tireless bikes chained to the fence, overtaken by bushes. I was twenty-one, just shy of twenty-two when I moved into this flat. I’m leaving at twenty-seven. I’ve spent two Christmases here on my own, gained two degrees. Tried to make something of a career for the last year and a half.

Darkness seconds away. I’ll miss my neighbor going to mosque as I get home from the club. It’s always a joyful chance exchange, a gleeful chat in the street at midnight or six am. Light bounces off the clouds giving them more depth. Watching the sunset is like watching all those boxes go into the ground. My family was always the ones to stay and watch credits, to stay and wait for the excavators to finish a burial. Flat vigil? … a moment to remember the version of myself who walked into this flat. My hair was much shorter, my eyes a little more wide and unknowing.

The caretaker Daniel caught me the other day on my way back in. Always in his uniform, black t-shirt, black beanie, one silver earring, cargo shorts, and a black tennis shoe. Black hair just past the ears. Aging punk is an archetypal necessity in my life at this point.

“Sunday! You’re leaving Sunday? God, how many years have you been here again?”

“Five.”

“Wow, feels like just two years ago. But then again I’ve been here for twenty.” Daniel’s from Portugal, moved to London in the late 90s for the punk scene. Tale as old as time, true as it can be.

“Islington used to be a lot more like Camden,” he told me as we chatted among the dumpsters that always smell like vinegar and have squirrels dashing out of them.

“Yeah I’ve heard about the heroin.”

“Well… yeah but not like Camden now. Not commercial. More like, nice book shops, record stores. I guess you could say how East is now Upper Street used to be.”

“I’d love to hear more about how it used to be.”

“I mean, it was bad to say the least. My first flat in West near Ladbroke Grove I lived a couple doors down from those guys in Blur. When I told my friends I had taken this caretaker job in this area twenty years ago, they were a little bit worried. And we were tough guys in a band!”

“I just heard about the body pile, did you know about it? Just over by the tunnel?”

“You know what, I never saw it but I wouldn’t put it past anyone. I wouldn’t let my now wife walk anywhere alone around here back in the day.”

I love Daniel dearly, he’s looked after me my whole time here like a parent in a way. At first, he was stern and stand-off ish. But in the last two to three years, we’ve become closer as I tell him my freelance woes and career struggles. Two falls ago I told him I’d completed my bucket list, seeing Manson live at long last.

“You know… I think I saw him in 96’…”

“THE ANTI-CHRIST SUPERSTAR TOUR!”

“Yeah that’s the one. Great show.”

A man of few adjectives for someone that devours prose, but conversations between us are always long. We caught up, found out he gave his son a reading list that included the Art of War at thirteen.

“So… what’s next for you? Where’s this all going? I really want it to work out for you.”

I tell him that I’m just moving up the street, the VISA stuff, plans to churn out as much choreography as possible.

“Stay focused.” - The fifth time I’ve heard that from someone over fifty this week. He continues, “You know our band thing, it didn’t work out. We weren’t willing to put in the work. We had one single get played on the radio with the right DJ that blew up, but not everyone was willing to focus. When things like that happen, you gotta take it and run with it.” It may sound like he has regrets, but completely the opposite. He adores his quiet life in Kings Cross, with his wife and two kids. All the time in the world to read and write.

“If I’ve got to do this whole dance thing, when is your book coming out?” He chuckles.

“Well, good luck.”

“Daniel, I’m not leaving the area. Just come by for coffee or swing by the canal.” Unceremoniously, I run off with my corner shop hummus and Twix bar to get ready for a gallery opening after giving him a big hug.

The goodbye to Daniel and Flat 9 occupy the same vein of difficult yet informal goodbyes. I’m moving just around the corner - but at a time of great upheaval both in the month of May and in life. Feels like being tied to the back of a truck and dragged down a dirt rode. Surely not that much is changing, but the chaos of couch surfing for a week with new convictions to make an art career actually happen make heighten every moment I’m not sitting in front of my laptop doing admin. With the advise and caution from elders, life begins to come into focus.

Firstly, the things that perhaps need changing have sharpen. I am in desperate need for belonging, connection, and placemaking. A calm life that takes time to unfurl into making sense. But like the hasty goodbyes to Flat 9, I rush towards the first whisper of adventure. These days I don’t want to slow down long enough to feel anything, yet I’m screaming along the bouncing dirt road for time to stop. For moments to last forever gazing at ripples in dirty water, or my friends making dinner in their flat. I long to be comfortable - yet I’ve chosen to live 6,000 miles away from my family.

Laying on my inherited memory foam mattress, sobs softly bellow. The purple fob and silver key are separated from my keyring next to me on the bed. The empty room that once held surfboards and hair extensions taped to the wall sits bare. It dawns on me that I’ve pulled out the last real safety net that I have in this country. As soon as I walk through that metal gate, it’s just me. I look out the kitchen window around 7:00pm as the sun begins to set. I don’t need to stay to watch it all over again. I make my way down the staircase, the graveled path, the courtyard lamp from the other day that I broke by laying a mirror on it. I’m eating the last bits out of my tub of mint chip ice cream as I approach the bins - my unnamed friend is just on the way back from mosque.

“When are you moving? Your last day is when?”

“Today. Now. But don’t worry! I’m just moving around the corner. I’ll just be couch surfing for a week - we’ll still see each other around the neighborhood.’

Five years, parts of me born lived and died here. Least of which being the Master’s thesis panic wall, closely followed but the multiple dramaturgical panic walls. I thought there’d be a PHD panic wall in this flat, but tides have changed. But I’m hopeful in the ways the waves are reforming my path, how the silent horizon has calmed my last night. Though tomorrow evening, we’ll see how I fare walking past the tireless bikes chained to the fence, overtaken by bushes.

My eyes reenact Universal’s Waterworld stunt show once more as the Uber driver pulls up. Mercedes isn’t a bad shout for a dame in distress. He doesn’t quite know what to make of me, standing in front of two bags. Does it look like I’ve had a breakup? Escaping an abuser? The couple that buzzed in behind me also gazed with the same stunned discomfort. Is the display of emotion too much for the British public? I chat to my dad the whole way to Stoke Newington. My body has gone numb, exhaustion overtakes me. On the walk home earlier, ‘Tell it to my heart,’ played from a market stall. As Dad and I chat, Sweet Escape plays quietly in the background. Signs from above that it will be alright? I know the man driving the Mercades has been listening. The road curves as we come to a halt in front of the Victorian walk up. “Alright, you must have heard all that and know I’m couch surfing all week. In your opinion, should I sleep on the bookshop this week?”

He grins. “Could be an experience.”

For a Girl so Scared to go Back to Los Angeles, I’m Disassociating at the Local Barry’s with the Best of Em’