It’s like a splitting of the self. First you’re there, and now you’re here, only not all of you is here, not yet. The body can cross the Atlantic in seven hours but the brain takes longer. And before it catches up to you, you’re adrift.

Tuesday evening. We’ve been here less than 24 hours. We’ve spent the day wandering through empty industrial alleyways in Brooklyn, standing by the water staring out at the cityscape, taking photos of the graffiti on walls and the abandoned domestic items–sinks, stuffed animals–in abandoned lots. We decide to have a beer, and they’re playing the Spurs vs. Man Utd game on the television and it’s almost like we haven’t left home. Then we come out into the cold street and a woman on a pay phone is yelling, what TV, there is no fucking TV.

Then we head to Shabby Road studios so Ben can pick up a guitar. We sit on the sofa; a fat cat sits on her hind legs, places her paws together in prayer for a little nibble. There are guitars on the wall, magazines and cables on the floor. Four pianos, a drumset, a collection of derelict TV sets, a shiny red accordion. The room is lit only by candles; we stay too long, forget ourselves, and when we emerge it is dark and I am feeling dizzy.

We take a cab across Brooklyn. I am light-headed and ask Xander to talk to me in case I fade away completely. It’s open mic night at the bar and we listen to some bad poetry and then a girl in black leggings gets up on the stage and places an enormous feathery hat upon her head and sings “O Mio Babbino Caro” as if she was in an opera house, spreading her hands, opening her mouth to let loose her voice. Then, hat still on, she stands at the microphone and belts out a pop song, gyrating her hips like an MTV superstar. My mind is somewhere else–half asleep, perhaps. I’m still waiting for it to find me. In the meantime, we have another drink.

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Why do we do it? Every year. There’s this point at which suddenly you realize you’ve come too far. It was nice for awhile; the crisp air, fauvist leaves, log fires, mulled cider. Then one day you wake up and the leaves have all fallen and made a wet black paste on your garden path. The sun sets at 3:55 pm. Even the trees are shivering. Here you are again. Arrived on the doorstep of winter. Ahead of you the months stretch: a lonely highway of sub-zero temperatures, fickle snowfall, dark mornings, sore throats from dry central heating.

Why do we do it? We don’t have to do it. Where I come from the mild cool of the season is refreshing, not heart-wrenching. Things blossom, turn green. The rainfall is unpredictable and comes in waves; one wet week, one dry. Things flood. The sea turns brown. The days are still warm enough to warrant a little sunbathing at midday, if you’re so inclined. If people wear coats at all it’s because a thousand photographs and films have told them that this is how people dress in December. Obviously I mis-remember it because I am not there. I glorify it and pretend that the storms don’t wear on the soul, that the isolation of a flooded week is not enough to anyone crazy, that there aren’t chilly days spent huddled by the heater with a mug of tea. But still.

Here we seek solace in distractions, easy fixes. Vitamins and vacations. We think if we stay under the lamplight for long enough we’ll somehow also stay afloat. We look forward with impassioned tenderness to Spring, even though we know it will be an uncomfortable season of waiting and hoping and accidentally under-dressing. We mope and we drink too hard and we sniffle and cough and think no-one’s ever gone through this before. Even though, obviously, hundreds of thousands of people have, and will, and are.

But then, there’s something good, too. The first flecks of snow on a pale cheek. The cheer of Christmas, the warmth of a pub fireplace. A brisk walk. The need for a coat. Why do we do it? I guess because, after all, it’s reassuring, it reassures us of the cyclical nature of things. It tells us, not everything is unpredictable. It’s so unfailingly predictable, in fact, that it’s comforting as a warm summer day, if you really think about it. For those of us who are afraid we might ever take things for granted, it says, don’t take things for granted. We do it because otherwise we would be adrift. It’s something to hold on to.

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I should write something here. I haven’t in awhile. How about this? We’re in New York. I arrived in a grump and a huff so it’s difficult to speak of the last twelve hours with any particular sentimentality. We got here; I complained; I moaned; I dragged my suitcase up and down some stairs, petulantly refusing Xander’s help; I complained some more; I fell asleep. But now it’s a bright Brooklyn morning, and here we are, five hours behind ourselves, waking early, not in the office, though it’s a Tuesday. Xander’s gone out in search of coffee; most of my travelling life someone has done this, first my mother, waking at dawn and slipping out, returning smelling of latté and buzzing with an energy that had nothing and everything all at the same time to do with caffeine, and now my boyfriend, who wakes later, goes out with less urgency, but comes back just as satisfied.

Here we are (I say again). From where I’m sitting (the couch of a very kind friend), I can see through the skylight that the day is grey and dry. From Xander I hear it is also crisp; the first day of December, all the trees now bare, we’re veering away from the autumnal, heading straight into the heart of another icy winter.

And last night we crossed an ocean. Travel is so funny.

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