Tag Archives | london

I have been struck with a sudden fit of nostalgia for London. I miss London everyday, but the memory of the experience of living there has been fairly faded in the three and a half years I’ve been back in the States. But lately small memories have been flaring with sharp clarity in my mind: the way the city constantly smelled of damp and wet and stone even on a clear day, the feel of the wrought-iron fences lining Russell Square, how I would wander by the fountains playing and walk past Senate Library and around the British Museum on a long, meandering walk back from class to my flat back in Clerkenwell. The taste of Marlboro Reds and the warmth of the lights under my hand as Sofa and I talked long into the night sitting in the niche behind The Guardian building. How Tesco and Sainsbury smelled. The sound of tuna cans clinking against my leg in their plastic grocery bag as I walked over the cobblestones outside Exmouth Arms. The unexpected jolts of bright red and green and blue and yellow and saturation in a City that I always think of as perpetually grey. How I never felt as though I knew her completely, the city, the way I know New York now, the way I knew Los Angeles then. I think I miss the feeling of being lost, of being new, of not knowing and finding my way. [...]