2: Expectations

I thought I knew what I wanted, until I got it

Hello, again! Or hello, for the first time! From L’imprimerie, a patisserie in Bushwick with fleur-de-lis wallpaper and gently spinning fans and rich coffee, crouched in the shadow of the M train as it carves along Myrtle Avenue. 

Sitting at this little table are, incredibly, 60 of us. Far more than I’d imagined, all good people, all friends. Welcome.

Before we talk about what a life is we must talk about what it is not. I now know this much: it is not a highlights reel. And it not the quest to satisfy anyone else’s idea of a good time.

The 8th of April, 2023: having completed visa paperwork with a team of lawyers, resigned from a job, left a lease, carefully packed two suitcases, divested everything else via charity shops, the Walthamstow Facebook selling group, gifts to friends, my Mum’s loft, and, on the last desperate day, a neighbour’s skip; having said goodbye to friends so many times it felt like a ritual, having boarded a plane and stayed on the plane and got off the plane and cleared immigration with the aforementioned paperwork, having done all this it is, so my phone tries to convince me, 5:30PM, and I am in the lobby of my supposed home for the next month. Brooklyn Point, a 67-floor tower in Downtown Brooklyn.

The concierge hands me an envelope with James Mitchell - 65J on it. Stupidly, I ask which floor it’s on. Carlos is the first of many, many people who will be patient with me.

As the lift glides up — ear-poppingly fast but still a long minute — two thoughts make it through the tiredness and the wiredness. This is it!

And... is this it?

Because the getting here has taken so much and so long. For six months I had one intricately nested purpose to follow every single day, and while some of it was healing and helpful, none of it was easy. But I remembered what it was all for, where I was headed. So far away, but drawing closer. For six months.

And there in the lift as the future approached, 200 metres above, then 100, then at the end of the key I’d been handed, I prayed to Robert Moses himself that when I opened that apartment door and finally stopped heading somewhere and started being somewhere... that I would feel the way I wanted to feel.

I didn’t.

The apartment was tasteful in the way only a stopover for the transient servants of global capital can be. I posted the obligatory “I’m here, and it’s awesome” picture. And then I sat on the big, anonymous sectional and stared into space, wondering just what I’d done to myself.

I messaged the only peer I already knew in the city: Alex, a friend from an old job who’s been here for a couple of years. I’ve just got here, and I need you to take me out drinking. The speed he arrived, it was like he’d known this was going to happen.

We went to Barely Disfigured, a brothel-turned-speakeasy that couldn’t have been 15 minutes away and felt like the other side of town. Over a cocktail that had literal smoke as its key ingredient, Alex briefed me: always tip, just use their language, not yours; be ready to tell your story, good luck with the health system. It sounded awful. On the other hand, he was thriving. On the other other hand, as I thought while he got the cheque (hmm), was he not simply made of sterner stuff? 

Sometimes you wake up, and you don’t know where you are. Sometimes you wake up you don’t know who you are. I woke at 5, because I had no choice in the matter, and watched the sun rise from my tower, and felt very far away from everything. I was there, finally inside the image. The month passed grimly and paradoxically: getting good photos from rooftop bars of other rooftop bars, going to high-powered meetings, and telling friends back home I was loving it. But also slogging grimly through admin, trying to cross the street, failing to find anything in the supermarket, and feeling alone. Most crucially, not just feeling like the bad stuff was bad, but feeling that the good stuff wasn’t quite good enough in the right way. 

We all fantasise. It’s okay to want things. But I do a kind of postcarding - an image comes to me from far away, small, two-dimensional, a narrow frame with the colours pumped up: wish you were here. (And New York City makes postcarding easy; don’t we all feel like we know it from film growing up?). It’s dangerous: these fantasies are written by a you who isn’t there yet, who isn’t that person yet. You have a vague idea of what you want now but no real idea of what you will want.

But this is what part of me wanted: to get to the fantasy and find it wanting, and then move on, move down. Because when you’re forced to realise that the technicolour stuff doesn’t make a life, you have to dig deeper to find one. 

And then you realise that when it comes to moving, getting there isn’t even the half of it.

---

Letters And Friends

Off the back of the post announcing the end of my previous newsletter, and Issue 1 of this one, a fair few people wrote back, and every letter was lovely. Thank you.

There were general good wishes, but on top of that every person wanted to share a little of whatever recent journey they’ve on: it turns out that when you turn your back for a second, people fly off in every wonderful direction.

These replies also make me hopeful that I’ll be touching on something universal through this work. As Mel put it in the comments,

Everyone - and I really mean everyone, regardless of age or circumstance - is trying to grow a life and to be entirely themselves, without the weeds of fear or self-loathing choking them.

I hope what follows keeps ringing bells for you. And if you find anything you feel could mean something to someone you know. I’m not trying to grow any kind of community here, just get to people who might like it. And again, please, write back in comment or email if you like. Whatever will let you say what you need to say.

That’s it from me, for now. Issue 3: Monday the 29th of January. Until then, may you find the good behind the postcard.

James

From L’imprimerie, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYC