Late lunch followed by a walk in the park. Not just any park. An elevated park. We’re up amongst the buildings–not above them, not looking up at them from the street, but weaving through them, like we’re hovering, like it’s magic. The sun sets behind us as we walk (through? over?) the meatpacking district. We can see into art galleries and meeting spaces, meet the eyes of billboard models. A strange yellow light descends upon the city, then melts away, into the night. We stand watching the long straight lines of the streets, the headlights, the glitter of windows. When we come down, our feet feel heavy. We’ve been floating.

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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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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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Not often, but sometimes, it occurs to me that I am very, incredibly, out of touch with the rest of the world.  It has always been thus, but living in Oxford makes it easy to forget that once I was a geeky Converse-clad girl with a bad hairdo. (I am now a geeky Converse-clad girl with a better hairdo. And sometimes I wear boots.)  My life has become something completely ridiculous, in a rather wonderful way.  Take this, for instance: one of the highlights of my existence is the rush I get when I swipe my card at the Bodleian and open my bag so that they can check to make sure that I’m not trying to smuggle a bottle of water in and walk up the stairs and smell the books.  And there are all these other people there! Doing the same thing! Loving the books! And outside (this is the best bit) there are a bunch of tourists who can’t come inside.  It’s a perverse (and very British) revenge of the nerds; and I’M PART OF THE CLUB!  I actually have a special walking to-and-from the library swagger.  Just so that everyone will know that I belong. (Sometimes, but not often, I even manage to swagger without tripping over my own feet.)

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We tell ghost stories on the way home.  It’s dark; Port Meadow is black, the river is silver and still.  We have bike lights and a parafin lantern.  A mist covers the ground, as if we’re wading through it.  I can see my breath, feel the tingle of my fingers. 

Earlier we walked the other direction.  It was early afternoon, light, grey, the trees bent over the water.  The dog picked up impractical sticks and we sipped from a small bottle of whiskey.  Amazing how quickly we could be palpably outside the city.  Smelling woodsmoke from narrowboats and surrounded by green and brown; the golden stones of Oxford had dissolved, the spires dissapeared behind a puffy cloud.  My wellies rubbed raw a spot on my foot, the same spot on the same foot that had been rubbed raw so many times before.  We came to a crumbling nunnery; now just a field walled in, the outline of a church.  We ate apples at the pub and drank wine waiting for our lunch. 

Now we tell ghost stories but there’s nothing eerie about this stillness.  The eerie part is re-entering the city, coming suddenly to a well-lit bridge, passing parked cars, pubs, restaurants, cashpoints, closed shops, kebab vans.  It’s crowded, though there aren’t many people out tonight. 

Meanwhile, I’ll get back into blogging, but my time seems to be consumed at the moment by a thousand little things–working, writing, eating, sleeping, cleaning, running, planning.  Strolling along the river.  Stay tuned.

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