Postcards from October
Dear London - How do we say goodbye when we are no longer the same as when we said hello?
A month of coming full circle to discover the circle is no longer the same circle, of shifting sands and getting ready to say goodbye (over and over), of crying in places and at times unexpected, of saying see you again (even if we may not recognize each other when we do)
Sometimes you need to come together in order to pull apart
This time last year, I was travelling around the world, saying as many goodbyes as I was saying hellos, to other people and places, but also to myself, in certain times and spaces.
This time last year, I had spent months mulling and stewing in my overdue readiness to call it quits with London, the city that has housed my physical home for the past 14 years.
This time this year, I am no longer the same person who arrived in London in 2010, and London is no longer the same London that welcomed me in 2010 (for brevity’s sake, a necessary understatement for this particular post).
When I walked away last year from a big part of the life I used to have, I was also walking away from a box of the biggest things that had defined my relationship with London over the past 14 years —
a postgraduate path in international affairs, a corporate legal career, an entire way of living and doing, the person I had shaped myself (and had allowed myself to be shaped) into being — all in order to fit into the slice of London that I believed I had come here to inhabit.
For almost our entire time together, I didn’t have much of a relationship with London that existed outside of that box.
And so after I left the box last year, when London asked me, “is it you, or is it me?”, I didn’t have much of a clue.
All I’ve had are memories, the same memories that have been surfacing and surprising me with their quantity, range, and immensity as I count down to the moving date circled on my calendar.
As I write today, the memories bubbling to the surface are —
〰️ in October 2010, my first sense of home after arriving as a postgraduate student in London, arising from the most unexpected of places
— buying my first mug, covered in different shapes and patterns of apples, from Tesco (the mug is now slightly chipped, but it’s moving with me), and then
— finally being able to hang up my clothes in my dorm room closet, on too-thin plastic clothes hangers bought from the hardware store Robert Dyas, following a week of fruitless and somewhat frantic searches in countless pharmacies (which is where they sold clothes hangers in New York City, where I had moved from)
〰️ a beautiful solo night’s walk across a Tower Bridge lit up in twinkling lights, with the moon winking down on me, on the evening of my first snow in London, where I discovered that snowflakes feel icier when inhaled than when touched
〰️ crying as much as I had tears to cry, without trying to hide away any of it, in all the public places of the city (this, I came to discover, would be one of my surest signs that I’ve made a particular place my home)
— as I sat with jelly legs on the 108 bus to North Greenwich station after receiving news from (my other) home that we had lost my grandma, before I could make it on to the 14 hour flight to see her for the last time (2012)
— as I found unconditional back support in the coolness of the vintage green tiles of the Labour & Wait storefront in Shoreditch, after realizing that I couldn’t outrun the ghosts from the recent deaths (literal and metaphorical), one after another, of people and relationships close to me — floating ghosts that in time would come to infuse the fabric of the city that I wore (2015)
— as I poured liquid salt into my cappucino at London Bridge Grind, while watching the sugar cubes inside begin dissolving along with an 11 year friendship that had followed me in moving from the US to the UK but would now be buried here (2016)
— as I set off the silent fireworks of my existential implosions and studied my reflection in the dark window glass of the eastbound Jubilee line tube, struck by the observation that neither my tears nor my inner earthquakes had the same ability to be reflected by the glass, in the way that my faceless silhouette had (2019)
〰️ shortly after the country acknowledged my decade of residency (or more accurately, my five years of paying income taxes) by granting me “Indefinite Leave to Remain” permanent residency status, as I had my first sinking realisation in March 2020 that this place couldn’t possibly be my home —
in that moment when my feet refused to walk out of my apartment to buy groceries, because they instinctively understood, in a way my heart couldn’t yet, that the shape of my eyes and the colour of my skin were screaming (to those listening out for it) that I was not just an outsider, but a guaranteed coronavirus-spreading menace to society who needed to be punished, vigilante style, and forcibly returned to wherever it was I had come from.
And I learnt that those were the only shapes and colours that mattered in times when the eyes find a reason not to see
〰️ yet, also, the faded, but still lingering, warmth of the sunlight, taste of the water and embrace of the little patch of soil that this place did offer to me those years ago when, as a late-blooming seed, I was rejected from planting myself anywhere into the precisely landscape-engineered flowerbeds of my original home country
— and these memories, as they have nowhere else to go at the moment, are emptying themselves into the cardboard in which I am boxing up my life for the next destination.
Saying goodbye to those we have stopped loving is no easier than saying goodbye to those who have stopped loving us
This October, I have slowly, sometimes unknowingly, been saying goodbye to London, as I prepare for one of the biggest moves of my life come November — to the next new home in a new country with new physical and emotional landscapes to explore and, perhaps, sink roots into.
And whether it’s to say goodbye in her own way, or to show me that she can in fact see my heart sometimes (maybe both?), this October, London has dressed up for me in the colours and shades of my heart — unfurling the landscapes of memory, identity, transition, loss, change, movement, displacement, and nostalgia.
Thoughts, feelings, dreams, sensations and memories flit in and out of my awareness.
And I feel the fleetingness of this October, much like sand slipping through fingers that are trying hard to capture the postcard essence of a day by the sea — in the building of a sandcastle.
Because I have no sand for a sandcastle (at this moment), I am sending you instead postcards from my October (which include pieces of September) —
an October of coming full circle in many ways and discovering in equally many ways how the circle has changed,
an October shaped like a midnight library of books where, by candlelight and shadows, I keep turning pages to slowly discover exactly which parts of home and the heart can be packed up in a suitcase and taken with me on the road.
Past | Lives
(24 September 2023)
— “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.”
— Can you really know someone who dreams in a language you don’t understand?
Past Lives is a film about how we can’t get home if we don’t remember where we came from.
If You Want the Mountains to Listen, Speak to Them
(30 September – 5 October & 15 October 2023)
Living in London means that when I need to really feel myself, I have to get out and go somewhere else.
I ended my September and started my October in Morocco, where I spent most of my days in the Atlas Mountains being a writer (after first learning to call myself a writer) and writing, writing, writing, every day and every night, with other writers, exchanging stories under mountain moonlight.
Things I remembered, and things I learnt, while in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco1
〰️ Act I: Paper 〰️
I remember, as a very young child, filling every blank piece of paper I could find with stories and drawings of those stories, filling myself with wonder at the entire world I was able to pour into even the littlest piece of paper.
I remember, as a young child, telling anyone who would listen to me that I wanted to be a writer.
I remember, as a not so young child, being told that my writing was quite good, but not truly excellent, that I was quite smart, but not truly gifted.
I remember, as a not-quite-adult, being told by those who were very-much-adults that dreams did not belong in the Real World. Simple as that. End of Story.
〰️ Act II: Glass 〰️
I remember, as a late-to-the-show adult, being told by those who were as-adult-as-could-be, that while it was highly commendable that I was “Excellent” (because, of course, “Excellent” was certainly better than merely “Exceeding Expectations”) and while it was highly respectable that I was sometimes even “Exceptional” in what I did, I should never forget that my ultimate aim was to become “Extraordinarily Exceptional”.
I remembered, until I stopped remembering.
While diving all in to fulfill Mission: Extraordinarily Exceptional, I forgot.
About my own dreams, my own writing, and my own voice.
For too long to remember, I had a job in the City of London, filling blank pieces of paper with words that meant millions, sometimes billions, of dollars to others, but that meant something less than nothing to me.
As I filled more and more of those types of papers with those types of words, they filled me, like a leaky balloon, with more and more emptiness, an emptiness that grew and grew.
And my voice continued to be forgotten.
Then I tore up all those papers, and I burned up all those words, and I found myself silent again, as if for the very first time, having neither voice nor words.
〰️ Act III: Tears 〰️
On my first day at the Atlas Mountains, I remembered.
Because I was asked — what had brought me to the Atlas Mountains, to dedicate 5 whole days to my writing, my story, my memories, to being together with other writers?
I remembered my story, because I learnt to start telling it again.
I learnt that tears can hold a truth that words have forgotten.
And in my story, and in my tears, I learnt to find my voice.
〰️ Act IV: Voice 〰️
Today, I am using my voice to tell the very-much-adults & the as-adult-as-can-bes —
hey
I’ve finally found my dreams
and you know what
my dreams are exceptional
my dreams are extraordinary
for the simple reason that
they are my own
/ and this, is the end of your story, for me /
Sputnik Sweetheart
( 7-8 October & 27 October 2023)
While in Morocco, I received a reminder about Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami — one of my favourite novels that I haven’t read in too long — in the form of news about an upcoming London theatre adaptation of the book.
Sumire is 22, a Japanese writer who can write words, but who can’t feel life in them. She learns that writers need to live life in order to put life into their words.
Then she falls in love for the first time, out of the blue — as if struck by lightning — with Miu, 38, and shortly after goes missing from a Greek island, “disappearing like smoke”.
Her best friend K, who doesn’t realize he’s her best friend, goes searching for her.
Following something I couldn’t yet see, I started and finished re-reading Sputnik Sweetheart, and booked my ticket to the play, within my first 48 hours of being back in London from Morocco (28 of those hours were spent in heavy, exhausted sleep, dreaming strange and vivid dreams that continued from my time in the Atlas Mountains, and that slipped out of reach like mist the moment I woke up).
I realized that on my very first encounter with the book, in the summer of 2008 — I was moving to New York City after graduating from university, and was just about Sumire’s age.
On my very next encounters with the book (in print and on stage), this October — I am moving out of London, and am just about Miu’s age.
15 years — a search for home in two cities I had always dreamt of living in — and the journey continues.
I opened the book to find a quote for you, and these words fell out, like newly-fallen snow —
〰️ “Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melding together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover – drawing towards us the thin threads attached to each – what has been lost.”
〰️ “Who can really distinguish between the sea and what’s reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?”
〰️ “I dream, sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.”
The Lovers
(10 October 2023)
In the very middle of Earth, there lies a sleeping dragon that can be seen from space.
Once upon a time, in the Year of the Dragon, two lovers started out on a journey — she, starting from the head of the sleeping dragon, and he, starting from its tail.
The lovers’ dream was to meet each other in the middle of the middle, where they would marry. And where perhaps the dragon would finally awake after a long, long time, to see them marry.
The lovers knew that this journey, which they would take together, yet also alone, would be their next greatest gift to each other.
(Their very first gift to each other was when they met for the very first time, on a day that happened to be her birthday, as well as his birthday. It became a day they shared in birth — of her, of him, and of their love for each other.)
And so through the seasons and through the days, through stones and through bones, the lovers walked across the sleeping dragon, towards each other.
The lovers walked, until she had walked 2,000km from the dragon’s head and he had walked 2,000km from the dragon’s tail.
90 days later, they met in the middle of a stone bridge, in the middle of the middle.
When they finally saw each other, in the middle of the middle, they embraced.
He said he wanted to continue the walk forever.
She said she wanted nothing more than to go home.
He made a comment about her shoes, which she found to be unkind.
She made a reply with her tears, which he found to be annoying.
And so the lovers went their separate ways home, to the same city from which they had come.
That was the Year of the Dragon.
22 years passed. Without them seeing or speaking to one another.
And the dragon continued sleeping, as seen from space.
My retelling of this story was inspired by the story behind the performance at the Great Wall of China of The Lovers (March to June 1988) by Marina Abramović and her then-lover, fellow performance artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen).
Ulay died aged 76 in March 2020, almost exactly 32 years after he and Marina started the walk of The Lovers in March 1988, and almost exactly 10 years after their unexpected and very moving final reunion in public in March 2010, at Marina’s public art performance titled The Artist is Present, at MoMA in New York City.
Today, while visiting the major Marina Abramović retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, I realized that 2010, the year I left New York City (my home for 2 years) to move to London, was also the year I first got to know of Marina’s art through her exhibition at MoMA.
The summer day I left New York was a sweltering July afternoon of 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit). As an alien in the classification system of US immigration law, I had 24 hours to leave the country (where I had spent the last 6 years) after leaving my job.
That summer day, I discovered the smell of concrete mixed with tar being fried in high heat.
Today, while watching the incredibly tender and emotive archive footage of the many faces of Marina and the many faces of the 850,000 visitors (including her ex-lover Ulay) who sat across from her, day after day, at The Artist is Present, I seemed to pull a little harder on this thread of memory, or perhaps, it was pulling a little harder on me.
And I started crying, while wandering my way through the exhibition, more than 13 years after that July afternoon of 42 degrees Celsius, while standing on the cusp of no longer calling London my home.
Today, it brought me comfort to think about all the tears I have ever cried in London (2010-2023), that I will be leaving here with the city, as my gift to her after I have left — like saltwater footprints in her heart.
The Time Machine
(12 October 2023)
Hiroshi Sugimoto and his art found me while I was in Japan at the beginning of the year, which I’ve written about in Lessons in the Art of Living (3) — Peru & Japan.
While in Morocco, I also discovered that he’s now in London as part of a major survey exhibition of his photography being held at the Hayward Gallery.
“My camera works as a time machine”
Sugimoto uses an old-fashioned wooden view camera and traditional black and white photography, applying the techniques and technology of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
He explores time and memory, light and space, investigating the possibilities for distortion of linear time with the camera.
For him, photography is “not (about) depicting the world in photographs, but rather projecting my internal seascapes onto the canvas of the world”.
I realize I am looking at the sea and sky, in one sense, from the same time and space as he had — as I look into the photo capturing that day he spent by the sea in 1995.
And at the exact same time, I am joining him by the sea from a completely different time and space — as I look at the photo hanging from the wall of the Hayward Gallery on this day I am spending here in 2023.
Standing at this confluence of different times and spaces, I find, within his internal seascape, the echo of my own, which itself spans other times and spaces.
Sometimes, he says, he remembers his dreams about the sea —
“The sea is also in turmoil. I dreamed of a scene in which the ocean would break apart and drift away into the cosmos at the touch of a finger.”
Hearing this, I remember that artists are here to help others feel less alone.
Mood Music
(a rainy day in October, 2023)
For your Jukebox
〰️ Is This Love, Aalia
〰️ I’m Always By Your Side, John Park
〰️ the sound of falling rain that awakens you from indifference
〰️ the sound of fireworks that you couldn’t care less for
With love from this side of October
The essay from this postcard of the Atlas Mountains is dedicated to every person and every part of the beautiful community I spent these days with, on the Trust and Travel Writing Retreat in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco
“I learned that tears can hold a truth that words have forgotten”.
Suyin, it was an honor to read your work, thank you for trusting us with it. There were so many things, I don’t even know where to start. For starters, your visit to the London museum, your tears at saying goodbye to London, and the significance of seeing that very artist again. Your intuition doesn’t miss a beat or a sign, you catalog those moments so well (their significance), and you really live them when you are in them, at least that is my observation. I also clicked on the links you left regarding the two artists who met in the middle of the Great Wall, the ending floored me. Your story, The Lovers, read like a well-known myth, that's how good it was.
I smiled when you mentioned MOMA. Although I am not as well versed in art as you are, it is my favorite museum. I used to love going alone and just wandering, I kind of knew my favorites (Picasso mostly) but I wasn’t picky, I just liked being around the art.
Last year, I made my way back to Manhattan, except this time to the Met to see Van Gogh’s cypresses. I’ve learned that when these sort of exhibits happen, I must go. Many years ago I missed an exhibition of my favorite artist, Frida, (not in NYC but somewhere else in the country), regardless I would have flown. I am sure you know, a lot of these pieces are in private collections, so who knows when their owners will lend them out again.. Anyways, once inside the room with the cypresses, I wanted to cry and I wish I had. I am not one to cry in public, but at least I have graduated to crying in front of those I love, as opposed to hiding in the bathroom as a teen and young adult. I admire you for not holding back when something truly moves you.
Although breaking up with an entire city may feel like an ambiguous feeling, I think you captured it very beautifully and I appreciate your honesty in all the ways you have been human. May you continue to keep writing, I certainly look forward to reading more.
Suyin, I feel incredibly honoured to be able to read your writing, raw from the heart. There are so many threads here that tug and pull and resonate, so many stories held within us wanting to be given wings to fly. I feel that simultaneous wonder and ache that comes with trying to carve out space for ourselves in the new, as we progress through these spaces to find that our self has expanded beyond what this place can offer us.
Similar to what I wrote about implosions/explosions, here I am, reading your words and finding the mirror in this phrase:
"as I set off the silent fireworks of my existential implosions and studied my reflection in the dark window glass of the eastbound Jubilee line tube, struck by the observation that neither my tears nor my inner earthquakes had the same ability to be reflected by the glass, in the way that my faceless silhouette had".
I stand in awe of your courage to continue moving, searching, sharing, loving, expressing, and learning about your self, your heart, and the joys of life danced under the moon.