home.

goodbye putney.

you've stuck by me through it all: the recession and numerous closures on the high street, the emergence of a mexican burrito stand (only one more and i would've had a free one...) and the opening of a tk maxx! oh yeah. bargains galore.

i will miss the writing on the walls. the bricks above foxtons muse: 'time like an ever rolling stream,' and near the thames you can spot 'time and tide wait for no man' above eye level. i'll miss watching the tidal patterns as i cross putney bridge, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. i'll miss counting the carriages on the district line trains running across the next bridge over. i remember well my lunches in the graveyard behind st mary's, the grouchy librarians and the always-crowded-no-matter-what-time-of-day pavements.

goodbye putney. it's back to hampstead now with its yummy mummies and baby gap sales!

venturing south.

if i had an endless pot of money and my choice of neighborhood, i might very well pick rotherhithe. something with exposed beams that overlooks the thames.

there is something mysterious about the old wharves and faded paint on the bricks. something that goes back centuries, to a time of exploration and discovery and slavery and shame. a time when pineapples were seen for the first time, the squawks of tropical birds echoed through the fog on ships coming up the thames estuary, and subdued lions and bears were brought to jamrach's emporium. rusted pulleys droop empty and useless, beams that might have once extended to docks or ships now hang in the air, vulnerable and shiny with a recent coat of paint.

imagine the river hundreds of years ago. the heartbeat of the city, the country. a lifeline of ships, goods, food and artifacts from abroad. the starting point of so many voyages and explorations. now it is neatly banked by high walls. boats full of tourists zip up and down, from westminster to london bridge.

still, i bet there are hundreds of stories still waiting to be discovered under those waters.

RIP Walthamstow Stadium (1933-2008)

The other day I was on the bus heading out to Chingford in East London to visit my friend's mum, when I saw this outside the window. So this is it. I remembered all the uproar two years ago when the closure of the tracks was imminent. Radio shows interviewed pensioners who remembered the old days before the national lottery when they would go to 'the dogs.' David Beckham - or was it his dad? - grew up in the area and worked at the track as a boy. It was the death of an icon, a tradition, a certain nostalgia that softens the edges of memory. We choose to forget the ugliness of gambling and absent parents. Instead, dog racing - like fox hunting for the upper classes - becomes something for which you must take a defensive stance. You see its plight, you defend it as a part of your identity and you mourn it when it's gone.

castine.

the house sits high on the peninsula, and down the hill past the birches and pines you can see the inlets of water weaving in and out of the coastline. the snow is falling thickly now, and it begins to obscure the view of the water. the world outside becomes a composition of grey and white and we sit inside, cozy and warm. a purple mug of tea, barack obama next to the Bible, and each of us in our own world. one with a book, another tapping at a laptop, and me at this table.

i imagine buying a house here, an old shingled victorian house. a porch extending all around, columns supporting a second floor bay window, seven gables dotted on the roof. i could let it out in the summer, and spend winters here writing. the town of castine is small. no traffic signals, no police. just several hundred people who all know each other, living and raising children in this quiet place. there is a small school with just 60 students from age 5 to 13, a small town hall where meetings are held and votes are cast. a harbor that has known a vital and staggering past, but now sees only summer yachters and students from the local maritime academy. the local children play baseball on the remnants of an old english fort that has known bloodshed and death.

but could i? i could stare at this landscape for hours at a time, watching it change before me. every second it changes, the snow becomes too heavy on on a branch and it drops with a fat plop onto the ground, the harbor vanishes behind a silver screen of snow, the sun is obliterated in a grey sky. only the single birch tree set on the hill below the house stands firm, tall, unchanging.

and in that time, i wonder if my imagination and my mind have also been working, churning. probably not. i still struggle to write. i like to imagine a little ramshackle cottage at the edge of the sea somewhere. somewhere where i can be quiet and still, but my fear is that i'll enjoy that stillness so much that i won't write and that is my greatest fear: that my wish for the place and time to write will be granted but that it will have proven useless. that i may as well have stayed in london and sat myself in a quiet pub somewhere with my laptop and not wasted the time and money getting to wherever i got to.

though of course that isn't the reason why i'm in maine. i've come to sit and talk with darla, and it's been such a good time of conversation and reflection. this house seems to sit at the center of a giant snowglobe, but luckily we haven't had to be turned upside down and spun around for the snow to flurry down like it's doing now. i'll be sad to leave tomorrow, but there are so many things i look forward to, this christmas not the least. all this talk about years past makes me eagerly anticipate the years coming.