Flight and Fight

Flight and fight. In part, a corny play on words; part, characteristically indecisive; part… a necessary rearrangement of my title to ensure an available URL. (I confess).

In light of Part B, it isn’t strange that the following thought is chief in my mind lately: at what point did I feel that this was a good idea? This temporary desertion of my motherland for the Mother Country. This foreboding, fantastic flight into the unknown in a miracle of science.

I sit in the center of my room, the same that I’ve slept in for fifteen years. I sit in the center of my room, (the same that I’ve slept in for fifteen years), surrounded by a sea (not exactly the Atlantic) of battered brown boxes—the aftermath of leaving New York in A Fine Frenzy, as it were. More remains in those boxes than what has left: in whole, a collection of things I had at some point deemed impossible to live without.

The task: to sort through these ‘essentials’ into all of my abbreviated comfort, 23 kg. It seems like nothing—why bring anything? The task is too daunting to start—my one, lone suitcase is empty. The anxiety is crushing, the air is thick, the pressure unbearable. The weight of Atlantic is, in its awesome, infinite blueness, surrounding and suffocating me mercilessly. Grace with a shot of mercy... Not here. Can I, will I, fight?

I leave for London in five days.