In Which We Don't Believe In Perfect

Physical Thrill

by JESSICA FURSETH

There’s only a strip of canal visible across the courtyard, but that bit of canal is everything. I’m sitting at my new kitchen table with my laptop, looking up occasionally at the water: you can see the canal boats docked down there, and the ducks swimming by. Grown-up life is working out pretty well so far, I think, even though this flat that we bought is the tiniest thing. There’s no room for anything in here, meaning my husband and I are now committed to minimalism by default. But when we were looking for a place to live it soon became obvious: there’s no place like home. I wanted to go back to East London more than I wanted space, and when we found this tiny place in the perfect spot there was no turning back. Because who needs space when you’re living in the city? Everything you need is right there, outside.

I’ve been living in my new place for two weeks now, and I have to say it: I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy. Maybe when I got married, on a whim to a man I barely knew - I felt ecstatic then, the closest thing I’ve felt to a sober high. Maybe that time I went to San Francisco for a month by myself, when my jetlag would wake me early and I’d walk the streets for hours with a delirious craving for silence and forward motion I’ve never experienced before nor since. These thing stand out as the happiest I’ve been, and now this: living in my new place.

I didn’t expect to feel like this. I don’t really understand why it’s happening either - although I do know it’s not about nesting, and it’s not about ownership. I have no strong feelings about permanence. It may not even be about moving back to East London, I’m surprise to find. While the weeks dragged on as we waited to move, time slowing down until four whole months had gone by, then all I could think about was moving back across town. East London is where this city started making sense to me, it’s where my life started making sense, I guess. I left East London for good reasons, thinking it would become part of the past, like most things do once you leave. But not this time — I missed my old patch like a lost limb.

So I thought the excitement of moving would be all about coming back to my old neighbourhood, but it seems I was wrong. Because now that I’m in my new house, all I can think about is being alone. I love living with my husband, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that after staying with family for nearly four months while waiting to move into this place, being alone feels like a drug. My husband leaves for work and I sit down to work at the kitchen table, and hours go by when all I can do is revel in the aloneness. I'm drinking it in with a desperate thirst only an introvert can understand. I’m just sitting here, quietly, and it’s a physical thrill.

Being truly, gloriously alone doesn’t mean closing the door for a while — it means having no one else in the house with you. It means, at least for me, having no music playing, just the window open and the hum of the city in the distance. A plant needs watering. I get up from my chair and wander into the bedroom, over to the kitchen, over to the sofa, and back to the computer again. I work for a while. The afternoon sun crawls across the floor, filling up the room. A text message buzzes. My husband will be back soon, and we’ll have some dinner together. In the meantime it’s just me here, by myself, surrounded by the city. I don’t believe in perfect, but if I did, this would be it.

Jessica Furseth is the senior contributor to This Recording. She last wrote in these pages about the little daylight. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

"It Can't Rain Forever" - Oh Honey (mp3)

"A Thousand Times" - Oh Honey (mp3)

In Which Norway Takes Us Around The Bend

The Little Daylight

by JESSICA FURSETH

I got on the plane — you always get on the plane in the end. I went to Norway thinking I could always go back to the city early if it got to be too much: the cold, the dark, the silence. I do that now, whenever I leave London: I tell myself I can go back early. Twelve years of living in the Big Smoke and it keeps getting better, or maybe I’m just getting greedier for it? For years my habit has been to always have a plane ticket waiting to take me somewhere, but lately the date of departure approaches and I don’t really want to go. London is gritty, demanding and thrilling, and the constant noise has been a backdrop to every significant thing in my life.

It’s been several days since I came to Norway now, I couldn’t really say; Scandinavian days are so short in winter. Sunset came at 3:45 p.m. today, six and a half hours after the sunrise. Then, once the sun has disappeared, the sky seems to stay blue forever. It is partially because of the cold, minus 12°C today, rendering each intake of breath sharp and the air sparkling clear. I lived here for 18 years, but I don’t really remember much about winter. Until I got here a few days ago I’d forgot how the long, slow dark feels so dense once you’re in it, like being in a submarine at the bottom of the sea. The daylight is small, in length and in intensity, like there’s a light somewhere just around the bend but it doesn’t quite stretch far enough to fill up the sky.

As cold as Norway may get in the winter, I was never cold when I lived here. I’m not cold this time either, even after a week of relatively mild frost in London that nevertheless felt like a severe and personal form of punishment. The difference is that Norway expects the cold, so people accept it and prepare for it, not like the English style of remaining in denial while shivering in thin coats in drafty rooms, wondering what’s happened to the air. In Norway, you dress like a polar explorer, with double wool down the arms and legs and insulated shoes. The trick for managing cold weather is slowly resurfacing from my subconscious, where it’s been buried all these years I’ve been away.

I don’t usually go to Norway in the winter anymore but this year I’m between houses, so I figured my mother’s place in this small Norwegian town would be a nice place to be technically homeless. I was right: it’s peaceful and plentiful here, even in the cold. Everywhere you go is a warm room with ice on the windows. There are no distractions, but somehow I’m still finding the hours slipping away. Suddenly the front door clicks open as my mother comes home from work. The town is sleepy under the snow covering the streets, the gardens and the porches. The roads are empty as people retreat to their wood-heated houses at night, red-cheeked from frost with hair static from wooly hats.

The night comes so early and I never quite get a grasp on the day before it vanishes. The novelty of the dim light distracts me from the things I need to do, as I work in the warmth looking out at the cold, where the disappearing blue light is reflected by the snow. The whole world feels quiet here. I love London more than any place I’ve ever been, I adore the rush and the noise, and I keep thinking this silence will start to bore me soon. But for now I’m just wandering around, from the table to the tea kettle to the bed and back, reveling in the little daylight. Life feels simple here, in the way it always does when you spend time in a place that’s not your home. I was born here but it never felt quite right, in ways that had nothing to do with the light or the temperature. Now that I’m a visitor it’s okay, it’s even a treat to spend a few days being someone I’m not. There’s a luxury in allowing myself to enjoy the dark and the cold, just for a little while. So I’m just going to sit here, watching the constant changes of the light, drinking in the silence with a thirst that won’t last for long, but right now it feels endless.

Jessica Furseth is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in London. You can find her twitter here and her website here. She tumbls here. She last wrote in these pages about body talk. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. Visit our mobile site at thisrecording.wordpress.com.

Photographs by the author.

"Before the Germans Came" - Andrew Bird (mp3)

"The Return of Yawny" - Andrew Bird (mp3)

In Which We Hope To Not Remember This

Body Talk

by JESSICA FURSETH

I never remember Decembers once they are gone. I walk through the days knowing I’ll forget them, that all the detail will fade, except for the feeling of stretching towards the light as it’s disappearing fast. This happens every year like clockwork, marking the seasons. My body is heavy with sleep and my brain is committing nothing to memory, like each day is a polaroid that gets thrown away.

It’s an odd feeling, being in the middle of a moment I know won’t stick. In the narrative of my life, it’s an anomaly: I’m living outside of my memory. I watched a TED talk once about the conflict between the self that experiences, and the self that remembers; how most of the time we choose things in service of our memories, even though the experiencing self may be having a different opinion in the moment. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, especially the question posed at the end: If you were going on a trip, would you choose differently if you knew you’d remember nothing afterwards?

Seasonal Affective Disorder is sometimes called winter depression, but I’m not actually unhappy. I used to be at this time of year, but getting older has fixed a lot. Now, the fog that sets in for the two darkest months is just a physical thing. Sometimes it feels like jetlag, or like having been woken up in the middle of the night. A sunlamp keeps me above water as I do the things I know to help: sleep at night, be awake during the day, go outside, eat properly, exercise. I don’t know what it says about me that I’m surprised: clean living seems to be the solution to almost everything.

People change all the time, I know that, but only if they really want to, or if something big happens. I don’t know which of the two are at work, but somehow the winter fog feels A little different this year. Card-carrying introvert that I am, I’m shocked to discover I’m becoming outgoing, all of a sudden drawn to people, to dinners, drinks, texting, even phone calls. I’ve always needed a lot of time by myself, becoming restless and unsettled if I didn’t get it, and normally, winter tends to bring out the worst elements in me. Still, this year, something is happening. It’s as dark as ever but somehow, change seems possible.

I keep waiting for my solitary nature to assert itself, but this isn’t about my head. Winter was has always been a whole-body experience, and this year it seems the body I live in wants to go out, talk to people, and get another drink on the rocks.

Maybe my body is simply taking advantage of this moment outside of memory, realising this is a holiday I won’t remember after it’s over. This is just for the experience. But unless I remember it, is this really happening? A feeling is bubbling up, it’s small but it’s there, and I’m hoping maybe it will be stronger than the waking sleep. Maybe this is a momentary reprieve, or maybe it’s a fundamental change, I don’t know. All I know is that it feels so physical.

Jessica Furseth is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find her twitter here and her website here. She tumbls here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She last wrote in these pages about a London particular.

Photographs by the author.

"Make You Better" - The Decemberists (mp3)

"Lake Song" - The Decemberists (mp3)