couch surfing

What to do in an artist’s studio in Hackney Wick

/ erinroseward / Leave a comment

You fiddle with the locks for 8 minutes before you pause and take a breath, exasperated. You wonder if anyone will walk by and question that you should be doing what your doing. It is 10:30 pm and though dark alleys with graffiti walls are familiar to you, there’s always that girl in the horror flick who the audience knows will be offed before she does.

You finally figure out that her key needs to be horizontal and turned at the same time you press enter on the coded key pad. You wonder why the security is so high for a warehouse building. You’d prefer not to look behind you as you close the first door quickly after entering. There’s a long hallway in front of you and you remember her directions not to go down it. If you did, is that the part in the horror film where you’d be offed?

The lights come on as you walk forward and it makes your heart jump. The bag on your back and the one on your arm are screaming at you. Your spirit animal is definitely not a turtle. You think about the boy who’s spirit animal is a snail and wonder if you should have slept with him and if he wanted to. You think about how many other people are in this warehouse of artist’s studios and if any of the are having sex right now. Like the scene in Amelie, your favorite film, obviously.

You walk to the left and up the stairs and through two fire doors until you come to number 13. You’ve already  used the blue and the green key so there is only one left and it has to be it. There is no handle on the door and you don’t feel it moving so you dip your shoulder into it and push hard. The door gives way and you have to catch yourself with the house on your back before being squashed beneath its weight and never making it to Oz.

She had warned you there are only lamps and your phone has died so you fumble in the dark to find a switch. You’re startled by your reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror. Your eyes are so black and your jaw looks square. There’s nothing nice to say right then so you turn away.

There is a desk with a computer, scattered papers, a mug of gone-cold tea and artistic tools from paint brushes to film canisters. There are piles of clothes in seemingly intentionally placed piles around the floor. You remember she conducts film shoots here and wonder if she’d ever like to photograph you. Maybe you and her together.

You throw your bag down as if it was your childhood house and you’ve just come from school, exasperated by a full day of nuns acting as teachers with little patience for elaborate story-telling. There is a full bed on the floor guarded on three sides by giant foam panels. She’s constructed a light blocking cage to sleep inside. You think about her here by herself, her lithe arms piecing her fortress together. She’s drawn an image of two cartoon transvestites on the inside of one wall. Think maybe you love her because she’s as unexplainable as your sister.

You look in the fridge because she told you you could and find something she’s made from who knows how long ago. You dip a spoon into it and feel the addictive rush of doing something your not suppose to when no one is looking. Remember that quote by someone about character then brush it aside. Cold lentils and potatoes and you wonder if she’ll be upset if you eat it all. You wonder if he made it with her, this him that belonged to the voice from the bedroom on the second floor. He had made her tea and soup and stroked her forehead when she was ill that day. You wonder how many times they have slept together in the middle of the afternoon on a school day because they are unattached to conformity and regular schedules. You picture him tall and dark to match her lightness. You keep eating her cold stew.

There are spices in old jam jars labeled with scribbles on scotch tape next to small bags of organic beans. You notice there are more chopsticks than utensils and wonder if she enjoys eating with them or if it is a way to keep thin.

You get naked and stare at the canal and smile when you think of someone sleeping in the tug boat below looking up to see you there in the window, backlit by her lamps. You think about living there by yourself, imagining making coffee in the morning, enough space to do yoga by yourself and later give a class to your friends. You would put a desk by these big back windows that face the sun so that you could write there. Maybe. You put on your music and dance around naked until you shiver from the cold despite starting to sweat.

You look at the time, it is almost midnight. Maybe you should go out and explore. Maybe you should put clothes on first. Maybe you’ll meet that bearded guy drinking British ale in the cafe who is as aimless as you. You can pass the time by talking about anything other than the temporal and keep drinking until you feel a bit dizzy and wonder if you’ll find your way home. Maybe he’ll invite you for scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on toast. You’ll eat it on the floor of his studio at 2 am and tell stories about how your parents met and whether or not you believe in things like marriage and universal healthcare. Maybe he’ll tell you he has money saved and wants to travel. Then he’ll unfold a large map he keeps by his bed. He’ll tell you to close your eyes and pick.You let your finger land (restricting it to Europe to be pragmatic) and when you you giggle he opens his laptop to buy two tickets. You’ll go together to the tip of your index finger. Maybe that’s when he’ll kiss you and his beard will tickle your chin. For a moment, maybe, a montage of bearded men you’ve kissed will run through your mind. You’ll kiss him harder to forget all that and the taste of scrambled eggs will make you happy in for a reason you know too well. Maybe this will be the start of it all and it’s so close, now.

You decide not to go out mainly because you don’t feel sexy enough after all of the legumes. You put on a t-shirt and underwear as to not be rude and sleep naked in her bed. Also it’s cold, but that is secondary. You wind your way back down the stairs, getting lost in one of the divergent hallways and mentally kick yourself for not putting on pants. You find the bathroom eventually and wonder if this is the part of the movie where you get offed in the fluorescent bathroom. Someone has left a few tissues for toilet paper. Whisper a silent prayer and feel like the universe is on your side after all.

Go to sleep wondering if you’re a failure for not going out or not having an artist’s studio in the up and coming part of London, and make a plan to focus on one thing for a while and see where it takes you. Start to recite a mantra in your head until you fall asleep. When you wake up, this will all be over and there will light flooding into the white studio through the back windows. It will take you a bit longer to see it because of the wall she has put up there to darken the room and obstruct the light. When you wake up, the first thing you’ll think of is her, and you’ll wonder whether she would put pants on to make herself tea.

The nicest people on the planet

/ erinroseward / Leave a comment

“You see there, theres been many a bloke who’s offed himself from up there.”

After two hours with him I was starting to be able to understand Tim the first time around. He had a heavy Welsh accent, having been born and bred in Swansea to take on his family shop in the center of town. He was pointing to a large protruding rock in the sea, what the vikings deemed Worm’s Head. From where we stood on the edge of the cliff it was rough waters bordered by lush greens as far as we could see. The beaches down below stretched for miles, and during the summer were said to be swarming with European vacationers flocking to see the second most beautiful place in the world.

I could see dots of white on the Worm’s Head and wondered how those sheep so aptly roamed around without falling off. I’d write to a friend later that I found them much more competent than humans. I certainly would have toppled off.

Tim and Cheryl told me about the walks they’d taken around the coast, explaining the path that runs the length of Wales. One can camp out along various points and cover the entire country. I’d like to do that one day, I said over and over again.
I couldn’t help think about him as I saw the green blurs of his hometown, the places I’d heard about in his myth, as distant and magical as the dragons on his flag. The only country with a dragon on it, I remembered.
We went for coffee and then to the marina for an Italian style dinner. We were the only three in the restaurant and I was tired and hung over, aware of my recent acne breakout and the dreading of my hair. But there was so much love shared over shark (“it’s delicious here!”) and garlic bread that I let go of all of it for a moment in favor of hearing their travel plans and answering questions about New York, my family, and feelings about American healthcare.

After dinner I wrapped my arm around Cheryl’s waist and we walked home. So familiar she felt as our hips kept sync, I felt like she was my aunt who had once cooed over my chubby baby ankles. How do some people touch your heart so deeply, so suddenly? It’s a spell to fall under and never be released, I hope. We made peppermint tea when we got home and watched Youtube videos of the Welsh national anthem and the tourism video for Nantucket, the latter I had told them to see during one of their upcoming travels.
I felt myself in a cradle and wondered what it would mean to cancel the next leg of my trip and stay a while there, drinking Tim’s fresh beetroot and peach juices and buying fresh flowers for Cheryl. It hit me that I missed my family, and I’m not quite ready to mother myself completely.

In Swansea I slept as if Cheryl had rocked me to sleep, perhaps tickled my back and read me a story about happily ever afters because I dreamt of the Welsh dragons and that once fairy tale love. I woke up thinking I had been whisked away and there was nothing left to do but keep falling.

Wales is known for its wet cold and wind and I woke to the sounds of wind blowing over the sea of two-story flats and small trees. Not much to uproot nor blow over, but I wondered about all the little cars and if they would tumble like I imagined one or two dopey sheep had before. I found a yoga studio where I met Rachel, Tim’s niece, who had never before met an American. I wonder what she thought, but I think we hit it off. We stopped at the market on the way home and I bought a bouquet and a grapefruit and she told me of her oldest son’s recent Rugby injury. I told her to come to New York and visit. She smiled and looked down in the way that tells the thought had crossed her mind many times before meeting me, but was growing further away, the way a baby seems to become a little human overnight. The idea was a memory one can’t go back to. I gave her a hug and promised to see her if I was in Wales again. What a strange feeling, not knowing if you’ll ever see this person again. Moments strung together like pearls. You wear them for a while but then one day you put them in a drawer because they’ve gone and tangled themselves together and you can’t be bothered.

Tim made us breakfast of poached eggs, baked beans, and toast. He couldn’t share the grapefruit as he’s diabetic and I realized after I had eaten it that it might have been rude of me to enjoy what he couldn’t. But there is so much of that going on during a self-powered European trip, it was a drop in a bucket almost full.

When he drove me to the station he told me how recently more people have moved into the neighborhood. He wouldn’t mind, but they refuse to integrate. Instead casting judgement on the Welsh, he said. It was the first time I’d heard the intensity come out in his voice. I’m sure the twinkle in his eye wouldn’t have been there just then, and I didn’t want to see him without it, as I was leaving so soon.
When we said good-bye I started to tear up. Less than 24 hours in Swansea with him and Cheryl and I didn’t want to get on the bus. Be careful, keep your head down. He shifted his eyes and the father in him looked worried. He turned to leave and then thought better of it and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  Let us know when you arrive in Cardiff. Then he turned to leave to head to work at the shop that had been in his family for over 85 years.

Before I had gone to bed the night before, Cheryl knocked on my door to say goodnight. She hugged me, the best hugger I’ve ever met, the way I’d like to hug every person I love. I feel like I’ve known you forever, she said.

Me too, though thinking about it, and knowing me, if I had had the chance I would have eaten two grapefruits. I think that’s what traveling alone does to you sometimes.

On being on Regina’s couch

/ erinroseward / Leave a comment

Our first couch surfing experiences

I wasn’t sure if she would serve me a cup of tea or a bowl of stewed eyeballs and pickled fingers.

I rang the doorbell to her one bedroom flat around 8 pm on a Sunday. I heard her come down the stairs slowly, one thud at a time as her hazy silhouette grew larger through the frosted glass. Her form took up the space of the window and I saw the outline of wiry hair.  Locks twisted and unchained, she opened the door a few inches. Her nose appeared first followed by one eyeball. I smiled, I had seen this in creepy movies before. I knew what was going to happen and it was almost comical. She’d either become my best friend and we’d talk about knitting or she’d cut me up and feed me to her house cat.

When she saw me she shut the door again, undid the final chain and opened it wide. She smiled at me and her eyes squinted until they became only horizontal lines with crinkles around the edges. Like little stick bugs digging their little legs into her still smooth skin. Her gray hair cut just above her shoulders was secured on one side by a large felt flower barrette. She had a crocheted blanket wrapped around her waist, a purple cardigan and a faded yellow turtle neck.

I got to the top of the middle of the stairs and realized she might want me to take off my shoes. She told me to put them at the bottom of the steps, and so I stepped  backward down the stairs as it was too small for me to turn around with my home on my back. Another minute or two of awkwardness ensued as I bent down to untie my shoes without releasing the bag and fell forward, by arms catching the brunt of the weight before my face smacked the floor. Off to a good start.

Her house smelled of long worn carpet and once wet wool. Brewed tea had steeped into the walls coloring them a worn in brown. Tiny framed watercolors of landscapes lined the walls. On the drawers beside the entrance to the living room there were two heart shaped frames with smiling children looking back. Both had matching grins and emblemed navy sweaters, and maybe I was tired but my first thought was that they were two spoiled children up to no good.

The couch had a  white blanket covering it in that way older people do when they don’t want to be bothered getting rid of the stain sofa when they can throw a cover on it much more easier. We were quiet then for a while. She paid no attention to me laughing to herself as she read from a binder, magic spells perhaps. It was my first time and I felt as if I took up the entire room.

I asked her questions about her life and learned she was a practicing Buddhist , estranged from her father and had one sister, the mother of the mischievous smiles in the hallway, living in the north of England. She had recently taken up painting and had a preference for Downton Abbey. There were essential oils lining her sink and inspirational quotes hung like limp flowers around her home. You could follow their trail from above the dusty television in her kitchen to the mantel of the fireplace in the living room collecting discarded bits of paper and wood, more than ready to escape in smoke.

I stayed two nights with Regina on a Thai beach bed, which is essentially a mat made for enjoying tropical seasides. I was up before her both mornings, leaving little notes as if she was my caretaker and I needed to let her know I was thinking of her. It all seemed to be going well and eventless until it wasn’t anymore.

She asked me to dinner the send night and having made plans at a local pub with a new friend, I apologetically declined. That night when I got home she had locked both locks though she had only given me only the key for the bottom. She waited 30 minutes to answer the door, having said she was on the phone when I first rang and couldn’t hang up right then. She wasn’t sure it was me even, because I seemed to not be coming back due to the late hour. Her brow was more furrowed than normal and her eyes sunk in. I could tell I had offended her without her saying it. This is it, I thought, this is where she kills me in my sleep.

What are your plans for tomorrow? She asked me. I was suppose to be staying with her the following night as well, leaving for London early Wednesday morning. Because, she continued, I’d like a night to myself. So you’ll find another place to stay. The corners of her mouth smiled in a way that was not unkind but rather matter-of-factly. She was kicking me out.

The next day I asked a friend to shower at her place, not wanting to be at Reginas’s longer than I had to before departing to London. When I returned to her house she made me a cup of tea and asked about my plans. I began packing as she sat on her sofa using an exacto-knife to cut out shapes in the paintings she had made.

While I shoved my stuff into my bag she informed me that she was sending them to homeless shelters as a random act of kindness.

Before leaving I went into her room and left the flowers I had bought from the market on her bed in the way one leaves them near the casket at a funeral. She’d find them later and I hoped she’d put them in a vase and maybe paint a picture of them. The pinks and magentas bleeding into the greens giving it a soft and far away feeling. Making the real into the imagined.

I kissed her on the cheek before thinking about it. It was a hard kiss and I had just drank water so it must have left a wetness on her cheek. When was the last time you’ve been kissed? I wanted to ask.

I’m going to go make dinner now, and see about a friend. A flash of a smile before she closed the door and again became a shadow in the glass. I could still make out the tip of her flower barrette as she stood there for I don’t know how long.

On meeting a girl crush

/ erinroseward / Leave a comment

From beneath the thin borrowed blanket, reading the story about a betrayed woman’s quick mental decline, she felt weighted enough not to stir when the she heard the soft click of the door. She was using her e-reader with the backlit screen, and for a moment she turned it down and pretended to be sleeping.

But, she was a stranger in this girl’s apartment, after all. At some point she would need to see her and say hello, greet her and assume the humble position of one who has accepted a huge favor. Something like looking at her shoe laces a lot and shifting weight from foot to foot. She got out of bed and turned on the light, opening the door into the little hallway.
Sara was taking off her coat and scarf, unwrapping a smile from beneath the gray woven fabric. She was beautiful in the way that she looked completely aware of herself. With cropped hair and no makeup to hide a smooth complexion, she would show up as she was to greet whatever happened, fully confident and aware. There was something of a movie star about her. She would play the love-interest who sat directly in opposition to the main character whose life was in disarray. She would come in with her neat receipt piles and stock of toilet paper – she would never be caught unprepared – and shed wisdom and guidance on the girl who just couldn’t fathom what her life meant.
She was carrying a pizza and offered her some. Though it was almost midnight her host seemed to be as alive as ever. She wondered if this was how she always was.