I was reading a book tonight as I lay in bed, about to go to sleep; a book about London and change and love and growing up. Not a very good book, actually, but somehow its sentiments and geography aroused in me this irrepressible fantasy of Bloomsbury in early June: last June.
It was an interesting time, for me and for my city. London was beautiful and balmy, its streets filling up with throngs of Londoners, who were awakening to the promises of summer, and all that the coming season entailed.
Jelena and I spent the days hunched over coffees and tea, pouring over lecture notes and course readings to prepare for our upcoming exams. We sprawled out on the grass in the pretty courtyard of Goodenough College, or set-up a work station in what became our own little corner at Freddie's. When we needed a break, we'd picnic in Brunswick Square, surrounded by students reading in the grass, shaded by wise old trees, and workers taking their lunches on park benches.
In the restless evenings, which stretched out painfully and beautifully-long before darkness inevitably fell, we'd stroll through Bloomsbury, meandering our way through quiet streets and leafy squares. Everything was in bloom, and London was perfumed with the smell of flowers, accented with the lingering freshness of cut grass.
And there was no better place to be than where we were everyday: right there in the centre of it all, in the bustling heart of London, but where quiet corners of Bloomsbury kept us safely incubated in our own hopes and dreams. After a good day's work, we'd meet Katie for a couple drinks on her rooftop terrace and talk about life, surrounded by the rooftops of Russell Square to the west, and Grey's Inn Road to the east.
Katie and I had both started seeing people at the same time back in April, and over the summer, we were both, slowly, falling in love. Over whiskeys and pints of ale, we'd hash through our pasts and debrief on our present situations. We were both happy and optimistic, but increasingly aware that however beautiful it seemed, however happy we were, nothing was perfect.
Those days exist so clearly in my memory: I can smell them, hear them, taste them, run my mental fingers over the textured intricacies of every moment. I think the intense beauty of our surroundings - of Bloomsbury in June - coupled with the magical sense of promise and possibility that really is a 'London summer', are some of the reasons I remember it all so well, and that it tantalizes me still, tonight.
But it's more than that.
I was so attuned to the finality of it all, that I saw the painful beauty in the transience of those weeks. Jelena, my best friend in London, would be moving back to Sarajevo the next month, a thought so saddening it made me drink in every moment with her, with thankfulness and quiet grieving. In a few weeks I myself would be getting kicked out of my residence hall, and would no longer be perched happily on the edge of the city, in my home on the Southbank, staring north beyond the shadow of the Tate Modern, toward the skyline of Central London. Exams would soon be over, and my year at the LSE completed. Other close friends would soon be leaving, and not long after them I'd be heading back to Canada for the summer to do my field study research. This knowledge of my own departure cast a shadow of doubt on my relationship: a relationship which made me happy in the moment, and in the naive embrace of new love, but that I still knew was probably all wrong, and would, inevitably, end soon.
I remember those days so clearly. It was all so beautiful and sensual, fulfilling and engaging; I was full of love and thankfulness and optimism, but also, simultaneous, cast under this heavy shadow of loss and change and transition: "this moment is so beautiful, but it's dying as I live it."
This is life, though. I know that. Whether stuck in the gloom of a disappointing November, or floating in the bliss of a blossoming spring, life is always changing, moving forward; there's always potential and there's always loss.
I'm so thankful for the memories of last June, for the lessons those weeks continue to teach me about the past, the present and the future. And for how they make me feel, tonight, as I lay in bed and listen to the rain, and wonder if I'm happy or sad, and why.
