Sinister: london has let me down again

[sophia katrina]

my dearest sinister,

i've neglected you, i know. i've been sneaking around with my real life, 
which is really far less interesting. and now i've come crawling back to you 
in my hour of need...

right now i'm waiting to find out whether i've been selected for an 
interview for a master's course in england i've applied for. this is hardly 
relevant to anything that any of you have been talking about, except maybe 
the oxford interviews (great stories, by the way!).

it's highly unlikely that i'll be granted this interview, for reasons 
including but not limited to the following:

a) i'm too young
b) the course is very very very selective - last year's application came 
back with a sticker on it that said "number 498"
d) part of me really really really wants to get a place, which is a 
sure-fire sign that i won't get one
e) i'm not that good

but i'm stressing anyway. i've been drinking coffee all day and have that 
nasty, over-caffeinated, "i-can-feel-an-ulcer-coming-on" feeling.
soon i have to call them up and say something like, "well, you people hold 
my future in your hands, want to share it with me? take your time" and then 
they will, and i'll say, oh, ok, thank you for telling me what i'll be doing 
for the next two and a half years of my life, and possibly the rest of it 
too, and i'll hang up. probably this answer will be "no", so i'll have to 
tell all of you as well as everyone else. and then i'll go to a party with 
my friends who will be waiting with bated breath to find out what my future 
will be. and we'll drink lots and lots. and then in a couple of days i'll 
get on a plane to england for the interview and if i come back it will only 
be for a little bit and then i'll have to move to london and my life will be 
there. (hello, london sinister massive!)

but maybe all this whingeing is just the part of me that wants to be 
rejected because it's the easier option. my profession is not one that 
promises fame, fabulous riches, fast car, fast members of the opposite or 
same sex, or even superannuation... i thought i'd dealt with this during the 
many wintery weeks in london when the heating didn't work and i only had a 
pound to my name, and if i could afford enough sainsbury's economy white 
bread and economy baked beans then it was a good day. now i'm used to 
luxury, i can't cope with any more garrets, rat-infested halls of residence, 
polluted air and drive-by shootings and stabbings. i must be getting too old 
for it. (londoners, i'm sorry, don't take this the wrong way, i loved lots 
of things about london, just not daily life, & how important is that, in the 
scheme of things?) in london every day was a battle... every day i had to 
fight and the victories were so difficult and painful that they felt like 
defeats. every night i'd crawl into bed, aching all over, too exhausted to 
cry or even dream. is that really living? or is that just masochism? many of 
you are artists or art students - do any of you believe that you have to 
suffer for your art? do our vocations really choose us? how much free will 
do we then possess? would i choose to be spared, if i had any choice in the 
matter?

Rilke (yay, Liz Daplyn & Archel, you guys have great taste in literature! i 
thoroughly recommend Paul Celan to you both: "with the butterflies, with the 
night/ let me into your slumber:/above you i am a speechless/breath that 
wakes...") famously wrote that to find out if you are really "called" to do 
anything (writing, photography, car repair), stop doing it. see how long you 
can hold out. if you don't ever want to go back to it, then that's OK. but 
if you almost lose it and have to work for reasons which you cannot fathom, 
then that's it, that's a calling. you must be humble, accept your burden, 
and structure your life around it. but many artists & art historians spent 
last century trying to deconstruct that idea of vocation, saying that art is 
a job like anything else, it isn't mystical or special, anyone can do it. i 
don't know who to believe.

does being called necessarily mean leaving home? making sacrifices for your 
career? for years i hated australia, i thought the whole country was 
nowheresville, a one-horse town without no traffic light, and i couldn't 
wait to leave. it was a colonial mentality: eurocentric diffusionism. i 
thought that london was the centre of the universe, london was where the 
future happened. i thought of myself as someone who didn't belong anywhere, 
who felt most at home when living on the road and out of a suitcase, and 
where better to be that a global city, a hub city full of people who don't 
belong.

i had a long conversation with a minicab driver from lagos. he lived like 
me: half the time in a tiny, run-down flat in london, half the time in a 
beautiful house with his beautiful nigerian wife and kids. (well, i don't 
have a beautiful nigerian wife or kids, but you see what i mean). he said 
that london was a place that people went to make money (on the stock market, 
temping, driving minicabs) and then they went home again and lived their 
real lives. at the time i didn't agree. there are communities, i said, if 
you know where to find them, of course there are. there are people who've 
lived here all their lives. but then i thought that perhaps my real life is 
in australia, too, and i was missing out on it.

i read about a man who left tasmania to go to university. he hated australia 
and couldn't wait to leave. then he had to come back decades later, to pack 
up his parents' house after they had both died -
"they slipped out of life quietly, not wanting to make a fuss." i cry every 
time i read that article.

i read about a memoir written by an old man, who'd moved to australia when 
he was young. he stayed there for the rest of his life. he must have been 
eighty when he wrote this memoir. at the end he writes "my real life is in 
the north of england, with my mother. one day i will get back to it."

then i dreamed i was in london, doing something utterly banal - buying a 
magazine in the tate britain bookshop, i think - and i had a sudden, 
blinding realisation that london was where i belonged and that i shouldn't 
have left. in the dream, that is. i woke up and for a few seconds i didn't 
know where i was.

i don't think i can choose. i'm like a cat that wants to be let in the door 
and then ten seconds later is mewling and rubbing at its owner's legs to be 
let outside again. i have to face up to the fact that i have no idea what i 
want. so maybe i don't mind putting my future into the hands of some 
admissions clerk, somewhere, because god knows i wouldn't know what to do 
with it if i had it.

i'd better make that phone call.

love as always,
Sophia
XXXXXXXXXX

ps how bad could life really be when my  *****sinister valentine***** is on 
its way?


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