You [finding your way around] alright? (pt. 2)
the "alright."
[[HOUSEKEEPING STUFF:
Oops! This is embarrassing! It’s been two months since I updated this!
This next post is long and not very well organized (my two signatures). I’m still not very happy with it, but I think it’s an essential next step for the narrative unfolding in this travel blog. (In fact, it’s the first piece that actually deals with the ‘travel,’ unless you count the far more passive experience of sitting on an airplane.)
Short of a complete rewrite, I think this is about as happy as I’m going to be with it. I’m tired of looking at it at this point, and much of the conceit of this blog is to get me not just writing regularly (which I have a handle on), but to actually put my stuff out there, which means I need to stop being such a perfectionist.
This post was definitely the bottleneck keeping all the other things I’ve written from being uploaded, so I’m hoping to at the very least manage something bi-weekly for the foreseeable future.
Anyway, enjoy the story!
-jonathan
HOUSEKEPT]]
Only I used to think there's nowhere to go Happening in a slow diagonal I forgot I forgot I forgot I forgot – when you I forgot Lately looking in your eyes —Life Without Buildings, “New Town”
v.
I was always just going out for a walk.
I couldn’t find a good segue, with “You alright?”, but that’s what I was up to – I was going for a walk. “You alright?” my roommate had asked, but I couldn’t answer. I had to go out into the world to see. “Alright” needed a reference; it demanded to be observed. The standard of living was relative, after all. I’d been stuck on “what’s up?”, manifesting the “nothing much,” but I had to test “alright” against new variables.
So I passed her doorway, descended the stairs, and left my roommate’s house.1 I’ll confess this had been a struggle: A part of me wanted to return to bed, rerolling for a perfect dream. As I staggered around the house in my preparations – brushing my teeth, putting on my coat, grabbing a snack – I could see myself becoming a gambler (another aspect of the British culture to embrace!). I could just throw all my time onto the bed, hoping Kubla Khan would next court me. My eyes were droopy mutineers – even if I made it outside, they wouldn’t let me see.
But no – I had to go out. I’d slept fourteen hours the night before,2 and I resented this apparent laziness. I had only a short time in this country – I could sleep in America.3 Even once I had awoken, I’d lounged in bed a while, absolving myself by taking advantage of the BBC iPlayer, sharing the attitude of someone checking up on their email or skimming the grocery store leaflet – I could claim productivity without really doing much of anything. Television was a passive income of intercultural experience.
I skipped a shower, for I’d wasted enough time. My logic was akin to the fan’s refusal to wash their hands after meeting a celebrity.4 Looking out to the great, grey outdoors, always threatening a drizzle, I knew I didn’t really need one.
Soon as the door opened, an eager, expectant wind jumped at me, having missed the memo that the drying wasn’t yet necessary. I fiddled with my keys, sliding the deadbolts back in – genuinely, this was the scariest part of leaving the house. The keyhole stayed stubborn as I swabbed it, and I already dreaded my inevitable return, when I would struggle for minutes to reopen the door, wriggling it around. Were doors different in this country? Were left and right reversed here? Or was I just stupid? Any onlooker would take me for a burglar.
I was tempted to give up, but my roommate had promised me the wind would knock the door down if we didn’t keep both locked, and leaving it unlocked wasn’t even a possibility – the upper lock clicked in whenever it was shut. Consequently, I’d obsessively confirm I still had my keys, every few minutes sliding my hand into the pocket to caress their brass ridges. This city had an architecture of anti-hospitality.
Finally, it clicked in. I stood at my gate, feet steady on misshapen brick, the leaves of our palm tree bouncing idly. I took a deep breath, opening my mouth and letting the breeze do the rest. For a moment, I composed myself, and then I set off.
My porch, if it could be called that, was far different from the cozy verandas of the American dream, and even from the roomy concrete doorsteps of our American reality. If you somehow managed to install a bench swing here, you’d break some windows upon activation. The only thing distinguishing our property from the sidewalk outside was a thin brick wall and the rusting green gate it held.
I loved a good patio, and though it took me a while, I eventually became comfortable perched with a book on the front step of our porch back home.
I had no such space here. The porch was a borderland, belonging to neither the inside nor the outdoors. Our welcome mat was not a standing offer; it was a purgatory, burning through my disguises, eventually incinerating my naked soul. Here, I felt like a stranger, an invader. I felt like trash waiting to be confiscated. After all, my companions against the wall were a palm tree and three waste bins.
I was wary of what my neighbors would think as they walked by. Was I on a smoke break? Freelancing as a gargoyle? There were few things more disdained than a loitering teen – even if it was my own house, I could be met with skepticism. It wouldn’t be too far fetched for an auntly dogwalker to threaten calling the cops.5
This house was my one stretch of territory on this island, but I was an invader on every other street. By lingering at the edge, I taunted the locals. Though people could handle a wayfarer, I had become a weed. If you were to guzzle down a can of Coke in the park, it may run against the green’s idyll, but it didn’t become a problem until you left it there as litter. Some would watch as vultures, eager for the financial infusion that may await, but the more sober-minded would rather it’d never been there at all.
I’d been here only a day, but already I’d decided the British must have castigated me.
I had left my sanctuary, fearful, knowing that most accidents happened within just five miles of home – if I was distracted converting that figure to kilometers, I was even more vulnerable. 25% of these crashes happened in parking lots, and I’d imagine car parks wore a similar percentage. The problem is you think you’re safe. So I always stressed the most when it seemed the coast was clear.
I didn’t have a car anymore, but that was still the world I was tuned to.
I didn’t know what to do on streets like these, where I felt taunted by my lack of wheels. The road was flanked by this terracotta-coatinged army, ready to march. They creeped against the pavement, pushing me to the walls – the sidewalk was still wider than what I’m used to from the States, but for this country, it’s stunted, bullied into submission. On the main streets, people take priority, but trouble arises in these residential alleys. In these compact neighborhoods, I felt like a jester – I was welcome to roam through the king’s courts, but it was so I could be laughed at.
In my neighborhood back home, cars were kept tucked away in garages, and the extras (as there always were) rested on their jutting concrete tongues, gathering that morning saliva. The road itself was always clear of the vehicles, and with the shrubbery along the curbs, you could almost ignore them. Now, I was the one in the background, a stagehand. We mostly seemed to be there just so we could crawl into the autos, unseen puppet masters. Just yesterday I’d arrived here in a car. I was sitting on the left side, so I could step right out onto my porch, as if the roads were mirrored just for my debut. I’d never again have such a formal entrance, left as a vagrant carrying my knapsack of groceries.
The American innovation of “stroads” was right up there with scaphism and the Sicilian bull, but these jerky cuts of parking were similarly hellish. The lane divider deceived you, for the remaining asphalt was wide enough for traffic to go single file. Some of the neighborhood roads were consequently one-way, though others just expected drivers to figure it out. Often enough, one car would try to fit into a notch against the pavement, spooning with a parked car or, if they were lucky, cozying against a motorcycle, a pederast to the pedestrian. The drivers tense up as they pass by awkwardly, and just witnessing it stressed me out. I couldn’t imagine the wing mirrors’ fear, where the danger was even closer – if the driver went down, they’d echo in that pain, though they outstretched may shatter independent too.
I could fall here, I realized, but I could also fall from the tragedies back home. I’d be stuck here, but just as impacted, the echoes amplifying. All I could do was walk, until my worries faded from the rear-view.
Think of this first excursion as a mystery story – mysteries, after all, being the genre generis of the British people. Arthur Conan Doyle himself grew up in Portsmouth – he found the city ripe for picking; the puzzle was what fruit it bore. We’ve all, I’m sure, had our share of poison.
There’s clues in all our days, but you must be mindful to let them sink in and synthesize. I’ll ask you the same thing I ask myself each night, taking inventory with my God: Based on the evidence I outline, how did things go? Am I alright? Are these questions synonymous? In a world cast from my own eyes, is my premise panentheistic? It’s up to you to read close, and come up with your theory.
vi.
I knew I was headed for the ocean. Beyond that, I couldn’t say. I found exploring the best way to familiarize myself, resolving in these first days to take a different route on every walk, even if my destination were the same. I was not just in Portsmouth, but in a nation of four nations. I was not just on one street, but in an acned grid.
I pinned my bedroom to Maps to craft it into a compass, but I tried to avoid the app aside from that. Maps was a chiropractor, intended to smooth your spine, but I wanted mine funky. I may have secured lodging, but I want my channels dislodged. The line is cast wild and tugged along, but I knew despite my flailing I’d always be reeled back home.6
I appreciated Maps as extra security, but mental cartography had always been more appealing to me. Back in Tennessee, I’d never been so lost as for it to no longer be fun.7 I always knew to find the river and follow it downstream back to home – that advice may not be as applicable when I’m up against the ocean. Though at the same time, there’s much less land to scour.
A long commercial street covers nearly the entire length of the island, and I live just off it – it’s the flow of traffic that now guides me back. Though far less interesting than the forest I’m used to, it’s easier to navigate. As long as I can see the spire of the old Methodist church, I know where my landing is. Go past VAPELAND USA, keep straight ahead at Vapeshop, and then a bit past VaperTrails – if you’ve hit Blunt Co., you’ve gone too far.
I’m really not sure how I could get lost here. Portsea island is only 24.5 square kilometers – that’s not even 10 square miles. I live only ten minutes from the ocean – walk south, then sea. For the east and western shores, I just need a half hour, if even. Eventually, I’ll set aside a day to circumnavigate it.
Though Portsea may technically be an island, it sure doesn’t feel like it. Palm trees are frequent, but their presence is about as pitiful as hairline surgery. The mood is more that of a peninsula that sublets. It wants some space from the mainland, but it’s still financially dependent on them. It is a university town, after all.
I find it telling that most simplified maps of England – including the one featured on the University of Portsmouth’s website – do not even depict the city as an island. Even in satellite imagery, the city is just a protrusion of the mainland.
The reason I have to specify “Portsea” rather than the city is that the northern third of Portsmouth's borders – and a quarter of its population – spills onto the mainland, though this is rarely mentioned in the marketing. North Portsmouth is wealthier, more spread out, and has an older population; it consisted of a few hamlets that were absorbed into the city in the early 20th century, for better governance. Again, it’s trying to pass itself off as something it’s not – we know who finances it, and we know it’s uncool.
To the south, the Isle of Wight taunts us by its mere aura – here’s a real island. When I was first considering school here, it kept tricking me on the map. I’d always be disappointed, knowing I had to imagine the island. My connections would remain, my fictions not so simple – on every map, I’d need to reopen the sutured terrain.8
The body of water separating Portsea from Great Britain is commonly known as Portsbridge Creek – “creek” should be the first giveaway that the divide is not so great; the second being that its most notable characteristic was apparently the flimsy bridge in its middle. The creek makes for a terrible herald, in its dryness dampening the island’s autonomy.9
Perhaps I’d been spoiled by Tennessee’s web of formidable waterways, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when I first arrived – I’d anticipated the bridge to Portsmouth my whole ride down from the airport, and yet I didn’t even notice when we’d made our passage. It was far less substantial than the bridges I’d drive over for my daily commute, yet so deeply paved you didn’t even get the vibrating echoes of crossing over. Thanks to some apparently Sisyphean construction on the defense barriers, I couldn’t even see the sea until I’d resolved to walk there.10
I’ve since met coursemates who hadn’t even realized the city was an island, but it had always been the big selling point to me. When I was still mulling over Portsmouth, the shore had made me sure.
Just a fifteen minute walk, yet even as I’d let hours spoil away websurfing in bed, these fifteen minutes daunted. In these early walks I realized that, even with all these different systems of measurements, I’d failed to consider the minutes, too, would feel different. Fifteen minutes down bustling roads, plugging my nose to the siren scents of bakeries and cafes, all the while dodging drunken laborers and shrieking tykes in uniforms nicer than I’ve ever worn – really, it wore me. I felt like a trespasser weaving around the garbage bins standing in the pavement as satellites and sentries. I felt just the same as I passed by rough sleepers’ tents.
The commercial street may have been a straight shot to the sea, but I just didn’t have the stamina for it – I pivoted to the posh, navigating quieter, more winding rows of houses. The buildings had so much more color in this country11 – the browns and whites were brighter, and pastel walls, like an applied blush, were just as common. My home growing up was white, but it was dimmed by the shade of trees and a dark roof. Here, they shined – it’s the difference between a shirtless, toiling laborer and a sunbather.
In fact, almost the only people outside were these laborers, applying architectural botox. A few residents were out, though they stayed behind their gated walls. One woman, with wide, honey-colored hair, paced around the garden on her phone and scowled at me as I passed. I clearly wasn’t rich enough. Even the seagulls were posh – they didn’t squawk at me, but their glares were more successful at warding me than the noise had ever been.
The houses got even bigger, brighter, and richer as I approached the shore. At the end, it’s just hotels, transient ghosts, yet I had the feeling the residents prefer that company to the working-class boroughs up north. They didn’t have to pretend the hotel guests were their neighbors. Though these streets were quieter, they were no more restful. I’d duck under scaffolding, and duck under ducks – England may have lacked the mass shooters of the U.S., but it does have genial old men spraying their napalm of breadcrumbs, commanding armies of violently hungry birds.
I had just emerged from the labyrinth of the bourgeoisie, the promenade finally in my sights before me, and this sniper on the bench throws his deathday confetti right at me, the flock lunging toward me, a few birds even boomeranging past me with their comet tails of feces flinging, and I danced around the mossy craters dotting the terrain. I cowered, envisioning my fate in this vertical integration of tarring and feathering. We’d done it to the loyalists, and now they’d have their revenge.
They must be called waterbirds due to how fully they flooded the park – the ducks were overwhelming, but so were the hordes of swans and geese and gulls. I knew I was in the land of the Brits, making concessions to that culture, but I hadn’t prepared myself for passage through this avian enclave. I could pay no toll of toast, and so I retreated from the green, crossing the road again, and I kept on until the next intersection, now leading to a boardwalk.
I’d look both ways and then again in reverse before each street, yet still I’d get a honk. Then again with the waterfowl, and receiving honks from them.
A honk was not like “You alright?” It meant the exact same thing here.
I’d finally made it to the ocean, and it was wonderful, yet I was still tired. Reluctantly, I had to confess a preference for my genial, sagacious French Broad river. I had developed a relationship with those waters – I had waded through them, wrapping my arms around them. The river was confined by the land, yet this gave it direction. It stretched on without hesitation, even carrying the land with it. It carried me, both of us assured I’d soon be returned to the ground.
The land, in fact, shaped itself around the French Broad. At as much as 325 million years old, the river is one of the oldest in the world, and it had so much wisdom to impart me. My feet learned the patterns of the riverbank – the mud, the thorns, the piles of those obsolete hedge apples. The pits and the burrows, dens opening into the stream. I had learned every tree that covered those shy waters. I even watched one fall, caught with a powerful, reliable splash.
The English channel, in contrast, was formed only 50 million years ago, though it spent most of this history as a shallow valley of rivers. Britain did not become an island until a megaflood 160,000 years ago, and though this wasn’t even true for much of the last glacial cycle. It was quite anthropocentric, I realized, to consider the Americas the New World. What could I ever consider England, in my own life, if not the New World?
Portsmouth had only just gotten to know the ocean, their fling going on less than 10,000 years, and I, the voyeur of all the “oi”-ers, was even fresher. This beach was young and popular, the temperature hot, so it didn’t need to learn how to truly talk yet.
How could I speak to this ocean? Whatever words I released into this water may be lost forever. If they were spit back up, how many miles down the coast would it land? Who would eavesdrop? Who would translate?
Portsmouth’s shingle beach was far more sprawling than my wooded plot along the river, but its visitors were busy and transient. The beach was comparatively naked; at its east side, the beachgoers were too.
I was mapping this territory as I walked it, but I could offer no guidance. Finally, I understood why dragons always lurked the outskirts of these charts. The sea’s approach was wild, and frightening. The steps ahead always carried mystery, and even if the threats were imaginary, they were no less impactful. I’d inevitably face obstacles on my journey, but worse was that I didn’t know what form they would take – these were the known unknowns.
There was always a road closed on the way, and some days, the wind was strong enough to physically repel me from the sea, the gust taking pot shots whenever I’d try to sneak through. Rain clouds patrolled regularly, but when the coast was clear, it’s not like that’d be a secret. People swarmed the promenade, and I had to weave through the crowds just to touch the water’s edge.
And yet, I wasn’t cured.
Portsmouth’s was a shingle beach, with any sand buried deep beneath layers of pebbles. Walking it was awkward with shoes on; barefoot, it hurt. What peace could I have when every step was a struggle, some bout with the grit? I unsettled the land as I walked – it was a show of force. I trampled seashells and mussels and carapaces without even noticing. They were all tumbled together in this terrain, beaten into the rocks. This was a hell of the marine, a hell in that these muted creatures lost any particularity.
I’d felt the urge to take one of these stones, an intense need to add some part of this world to my home, though a notice forbade visitors from doing so. With a beach so big, you’d think it’d be impossible to tell if a few were added or removed, though this was also a country virulently, violently opposed to immigration.
In many respects, England was just like home.
It disappointed me, how much it felt like home.
There was beauty here, though I felt increasingly sure this resort would be my last.
vii.
It had taken just one day for the magic to fade. I had woken up in a cell. A cell in a new body, where I would eventually be subsumed and replaced by some later ‘me.’ I knew I was stuck here. No matter how big here was, I was stuck there. Even if I went back home, I might still be stuck. I had scraped the wallpaper down, but the bricks remained.
A year was as long as forever. Looking at the past year, I knew that to be the case; looking at the year before, I figured this year coming could be as much as twice that.
So why not stay inside? I could resign myself to that forever. If I froze alongside time, I would make my own space, co-eternal. If I meanwhile chose to march a road that never ended, it wouldn’t be adaptation but delusion, and it would wear my souls.
A year away from home, from the people who I loved, but as long as I stayed in my bed, on my laptop, I was still here. My belongings were enough to fill a room. My stories had been carried over.
How could I write anew without erasing what I had? I was a palimpsest, my old life ruptured yet this new one grayed and tarnished by its ruins. I’d write the same lines, over and over, retreading same pathways. What separated this from a vacation was its regularity and repetition.
My rituals would be to unknown and fallow gods.
I knew God back home, and I knew his emissaries. White feathers littered the beaches here, but I knew that was deception – our angels were far more varied.
It was all just birds in Portsmouth. The regal swans, and their courts of geese. Seagulls and pigeons and magpies all skipped along the paths, and they were big for what they were, but they were small for the eagles who’d roost in my backyard.
I missed my family in the Smokies. I missed the snakes and salamanders, the turtles and the otters. I missed the songs of the coyotes and the frogs. Sometimes I found them boring to be around, but I missed the muskrats and groundhogs, and though their machismo frightened me, I even missed the bears. I used to go on walks with skunks, and stargaze with the possums – you may call it playing dead, but our spirits were in the stars.
I’d see squirrels in the park here, but that’s it. Never a rabbit, nor chipmunks. And they’re our squirrels, too. They tricked me at first, for they’re bigger here, but it’s just because they’ve gotten portly. They invaded, and they feasted. The native red squirrels, meanwhile, are nearly extinct in England, eradicated by the squirrelpox our American friends carry.12
We grew fat and made everyone else sick, taking their plates and calling it benevolence.
I didn’t want to exert this greed. I didn’t want to encroach on those around me, displacing them with an impatient pace, or grating their ears with a discordant voice.
I missed the world I knew how to step to. But most of all, I missed the river.
Back in the US, I took a walk every day – often enough, I’d go for two or three. I made sure to walk down to the French Broad at least once a day as well.
Some days, I’d be too busy with school. My “walk” would be going from the dorms to the lecture hall. It’d be cold, or rainy, or I’d be sick or sleep deprived. I never told myself I’d skip, but these factors would lead me to forget. Then it’d be midnight, and I’d take inventory of the day as I prepared for bed, and it would hit me: I hadn’t gone to the river yet.
Sometimes, this was a surprise, like a candy on your pillow. Sometimes, I’d be disappointed, for I’d be tired enough I didn’t want to deal with anything between my head and my pillow. Regardless, every single time, I’d put on my shoes and jacket (or, depending on the reason for the delay, my boots and umbrella), and out I’d go.
These walks fermented; it was the late-night ones I always cherished the most. No matter what my attitude had been beforehand, by the time I was at the river, I always wanted to stay. The night before my graduation, I did just that, bringing a hammock and sleeping overnight. I was awoken by a drizzle.
There was something sacred about the river. It washed away my worries. This was where I’d talk to the animals. This was where I sang and danced without embarrassment, for my only witnesses were even more eccentric with their squawks and snickers.
Two years ago, on a crisp February morning, I’d gotten up with the sunrise to see it bouncing off those waters. I took my scooter there, starting at the decommissioned chapel on the hilltop and coasting all the way down the winding road to the river.
The asphalt got rougher and rougher as I descended, spotted with potholes. At the base, it connected to a gravel road along the river, which was in even further disuse. It used to be a trailer park, but only a few signs of this remain, green cutting through the fragmented pavement. People weren’t really meant to drive there anymore, and a gate closed at five o’clock each night to ensure this. I normally walked in the evenings, so I’d sidle between the gap in the post, catching spiderwebs as I did so, but on this morning I would blitz through the gate, perhaps the first to breach it.
The wind flew through me, the scooter’s wheels whirring. My scant kicks were like steps into another world – it was a magical feeling, like flying and falling both at once. Then you make it to the river, and the road demands your attention – a sharp, ninety degree turn, clinging to the handles as the wheels bounced up and down the rocks, gravel scattering.
The vibrations forced a song out of you, warming up your hands, reminding you of your reliance on this tool. Eventually, the pebbles would smooth again, and with all the momentum from the hill, it’s enough to coast this for over two-hundred yards.
But then I ate it. I missed the turn, my wheel snagging on a rock or something. I tried to steer, but any control was illusion by this point. The front wheel hit a clump of grass, skidding forward before falling into the field, and I was launched forward.
I slid thirty feet down the dewy river bank, my shirt turned green. It took me five minutes to find my glasses in the grass. My hands were both bleeding. The land had stained me, and I had stained it.
I didn’t hurt. But I did retreat.
That night, I realized my walk had been aborted. I returning to the river, and, there, I saw it.
A fox.
The fox was waiting for me, having sniffed the red on the field. It stood ethereal in the outskirts of lamplight. It felt a sin for this technology to documenting it, etching a copy laid against the ground. The fox was the heat of a rusting star, and this light could trace only the black hole
The creature stood at the edge of a streetlamp’s cropping. It scrutinized me, curious, and I felt a pang of embarrassed over my earlier fall, as though it had witnessed it, displaced in time.
After a few minutes, it fled into the forest, and I chased it until that bounding red wisp was extinguished. Following the ember, I saw the trees in new light.
This was what I walked for, this the bounty of the river. I loved each walk, but these miracles reframed them all. They elevated the ordinary alongside themselves. It was the first and only time I’d seen a fox – whenever I told friends I’d found one, they were amazed.
Months after, walking along the waters, I’d smile while remembering that fox.
It had taken just one day for me to see Tennessee through rose-tinted lenses.
Of all my walks back home, I weighed my first forays into Portsmouth up against the greatest – of course I’d come up disappointed.
Despite all the factors that may have dampened my enjoyment – the aspects of environment that truly weren’t as compatible with my pace of life – these were all incidental to the real issue at hand:
Sometimes, I just didn’t feel like walking anymore. And though it was tempting to assign blame, that hadn’t started in Portsmouth. It had begun in me.
This past year, I kept to my river walks, but I’d started to distract myself with music, replacing birdsong with shoegaze on shuffle. This was a gateway plug; as the months went on, I fell into podcasts and later even audiobooks, which I’d sworn I’d never touch. But I was desperate for anything to devote my mind to.
Without realizing, I’d begun living to pass the time. I had long lived in anticipation of what came next, but the future had slipped from my grasp. Rather than examine these dead ends, I simply froze.
This was only the façade of walking, a thing of entirely distinct intentions. The motor was running, but nothing was coming on. I had always walked to observe the world and converse with it. I searched for inspiration. I’d toy with my stories, hosting mental theatres of transients.
But I had become nervous of myself. My writer’s block seemed insurmountable, and this was a death blow for someone who had conceived themselves chiefly as a writer. My few creative flows were better described as destructive; what writing I produced was either stiff or bordering on self-loathing. I felt like I was back in high school. I had devolved again to “alright.”
Then, over summer, I slept in many beds. I was running from a nightmare, but I realized the soil had never been at fault – it was the seeds of my dreams were rotten.
As I hopped around the city, the river was not accessible quite so often. Even when it was in walking distance, I didn’t always make this trek. In freezing rain, I’d gone, but now I spent my summer indoors and alone.
I’d built up a resistance to its holy water. On one late summer stroll, as it rippled in the moonlight, a terrible thought raced through my mind and left behind its litter. I thought about speeding by dangerously fast, making my ears bleed with the songs that once made me cry, and then swerving out of the way of a squirrel or some such critter. The animals had always been my savior.
To clarify, I was thinking about doing this with my car. Not my scooter.
Just two weeks before I left this country, I had another fall. I had been unhappy, and I wanted the river to console me; this was its reply. Over the years, I’d climbed up dying, spindly trees, waded against rocky currents, and sidled along crumbling slopes. I’d once gone so deep into the woods that I’d emerged in some neighboring farmland, greeted with TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT painted red over the owner’s garage. I’ve needed to put up my hands, but it was only now, simply ambling through, that I fell. This was the second time I’d fallen at this river – the first had done nothing to tarnish a perfect day, yet this one was so bleak as not to feel like a day at all. I do not remember light or color; I remember a starless dusk.
This time, it hurt. I cried, but I didn’t bleed. No fox came to nurse my wounds.
My hands both rang out with pain. My left wrist froze; it soon swelled. My final days, and I now lacked even the option to write. I couldn’t draw. I couldn’t cook. I couldn’t drive. I didn’t know how I’d manage to drag my baggage with me.
And then, my final walk by the river, on my penultimate night in Knoxville, I felt empty.
I’d just had a going away party, and I felt guilty over how much the host loved me, at how he believed in me when I could only pretend to. I was no longer walking; I was fleeing in terror. But he saw me running a marathon. He wanted to toast me; I wanted to toast myself. I wanted to push myself into a suffocatingly tight machine and let it burn and blacken me, and I would be reborn as something crunchier. The flavor would come out. The jams and butters would finally stick to me, melt for me. I would deserve this salvation because it would hurt.
I was going to a country, I knew, where everyone loved toast. Even beans would throw themselves at me, and those pretty English marmalades.
But why couldn’t I be someone who celebrated people with my words? Instead, I built a tower of myself. From its rubber ramparts, I joked of toasting myself.
I teared up by the river, where I could always be safely vulnerable, where I knew the water running from me would always be outnumbered. Was the crying just because I was leaving? The past few months of nothing had been building up in me, and this was just a justification to release them, to redeem those tears as noble.
The host of my party, and all my other friends, had filled me with such love, and somehow I’d already spilled it out. The cup had runneth over, and so I called it waste and flipped it upside down.
I tried to pray at the river, but God wasn’t at home, and he’d still never set up his voicemail. I tried to dance, but each swing pulsed painfully in my wrist.
I no longer felt at home there. How could I, when I was leaving? If only I looked down, I’d realize I was over a gorge. The river had run dry. I no longer saw the sky reflected, the stars having vanished from the waters; they had vanished from my soul.
I was hollowed out, and I saw the world as just the same.
They don’t let you fly with liquids, after all.
That was a privilege for the waterbirds.
viii.
The seagulls were obstinate. They sauntered down the pavement, poking at breadcrumbs and puddles of ice cream. The way had been paved for us, but these birds made no effort to accommodate us. They’d hop in place, as though to taunt us, yet the pedestrians tuned them out. They’d simply walk around them, the pet owners restraining their overzealous pups.
But I kept stopping, watching. I’d follow their wet, webbed prints down the esplanade, guilt creeping in me. I had a terrible sense I didn’t belong here. It hadn’t really been paved for me, had it?
Everyone else walked by with purpose. They had podcasts or companions; there was a rhythm to their step. They looked straight to the future, yet my head was spinning in every way, my eyes and ears bloated. The intersecting voices of passersby – the novelty of their charming accents – were all gifts to me, sonic kisses, and I could do nothing to reciprocate. This, certainly, contributed to my anxiety. Saying “hi,” would feel like panhandling. If I asked for directions, I wouldn't just get an answer, but one with a little bow on it. Every enunciation was a surprise – because I always got something out of it, even the smallest, most mundane snippets felt like eavesdropping. It was England, so of course everyone was spilling tea.
I had never loved my voice, but at least it’d been a level playing field back home – here, I’m running a race barefoot. So often, I heard people speaking in foreign languages – be it Punjabi or Persian or Polish – but this was different in that they offered something new. They were a seasoning; I was the bland off-brand. My sound dipped into the uncanny valley. The British had orchestration to their chords, a vernacular cultivated over a thousand years, though I had just let myself in, ubiquitous and colorless.
I was the Xbox 360 of accents.
I was certainly not the only Southern American who sought to hide their accent, ashamed. My upbringing was too urbanized for the dialect to dig its way too deeply, but I knew people who would code-switch, covering up their native Appalachian tongue. I had always found this tragic, but I could never truly relate to it – only here, in this other South, did I understand. The second you open your mouth, you invite every worst prejudice in.
It was obvious how out of place I was, an ill-fitting piece crammed into a jigsaw puzzle, my knobs bent and crumpled. Even if I could fit in on first glance, it’d only be by flipping us all over, removing us of color and distinction. Without me, this city made a painting; with me, the best it could do was cardboard.
My clothes had been produced in the USA, along with my tan. My backpack confirmed me either a student or a tourist, and the only students who’d moved in by now were internationals, so it wasn’t so much a venn diagram as a Hawaiian earring. Perhaps I could’ve passed as an eccentric, or a geek, but neither carried much improvement.
Surely, they all knew this, but the British didn’t ever confront. They just let everything simmer up, making things miserable for everyone – misery was a national currency.
I was a guest in this country, and I tried to adopt to their meanings.
So “chips” were French fries. “Lift” was elevator. And “Jonathan” was a total bum. A gatecrasher, a splasher, a masher to this nation.
ix.
I took a turn.
I came across a walled ruin. “Southsea Rose Garden,” a sign read, though its trophies were largely out of season. Green, spindly stems rose from massive blots of dry soil, only a few offering flowers. A map of the park labeled the plot’s highlights – names like Deep Secret, Peaudouce, Golden Kiss, Pigalle.
One bush, called Buxom Beauty, left much to be desired. Its protuberances had wilted – weren’t they supposed to perk up in the cold?13
It was such a tasteless name for the nature, and yet I had to admit an ineffable Britishness to the title14 – it was wrong, but it was right. Its bawdiness revealed to me their spirals as a cipher for salacity, and I reviewed the other flowers with suspicion. What exactly was a Double Delight, anyway? And did you know Pigalle is not just a cultivar, but Paris’ infamous red-light district?15 Most ominous: Just Joey. If someone offered to “just joey” me, I would file a restraining order.
A sundial stood as the garden’s centerpiece, though this struck me as odd when the sun so rarely shined here. Time just jumped at you. You never see it pass, lurking in the clouds. You cannot cut through the fog, and so it snares you.
It was already evening. The sundial couldn’t offer me the time, but it did wriggle an estimate from onlookers – it extracted a deep regret from me, at how I’d spent half the day languishing in bed. I paced along the garden’s perimeter, lined with benches. Each seat was dedicated in memory to someone – some ornate, and others simple. Some were rusting, others overgrown, yet many were resolute in their structure. The names hinted at their generation; the years confirmed these trends. One bench – listing the woman listed before the man – honored the Cheeseman family. At another bench, the deceased’s full Christian name is inexplicably in quotation marks. He could only be spoken of, but perhaps he came to terms with this back when he still walked; the punctuation insulated him, in a way.
A century of sitting, resting, reflecting. A young man had passed away, but his bench was ancient, he now older than the octogenarian resting beside him. The roses bloomed in cycles, and so did come the years like tides, a rhythm contingent on these concentric orbits yet keeping a melody of their own.
“So many of them are up and religious,” a passerby ranted. “It is insane.” Lovers kissed on a nearby bench. A bicycle was propped against the seat beside them, an infinity we peddled. People die; we love.
I could watch them bloom.
The Southsea Rose Garden was built on the site of Lumps Fort, a name just as British as Buxom Beauty, though on the opposite end of the spectrum. There had been a military presence on the grounds since 1545, rearmed and renovated every time tensions with the French flared up.16 The current construction dates to 1860, though Britain had worked out an agreement with Napoleon III before they’d finished building. With every lull of history, the weapons wilted, only to bloom with new artillery a few years later – the 1906 disarming was undone with the First World War, and the city council’s too-eager peacetime purchase of the land in 1932 was hijacked by the war’s sequel.
Before all this were gardens, dug and trampled and bombed, yet now we saw their return, fertilized by the desiccating remains of that old war. The fort has been disarmed for nearly eighty years now – the roses, one hopes, may prevail.
At the fort’s south side was a model village of Southsea, opening alongside the gardens in the 1950s. Much like the family pictures the desk jockey keeps at their workstation, this reminded the cannons what they’d been shooting for.
Towards the north, a reminder of what they’d been shooting: the Southsea Japanese garden, opened in 2000 to commemorate Portsmouth’s new twinning with the city of Maizuru. Here, they plotted how to kill the Japanese, and now both sides were celebrated.
I passed through the torii just as a kid zoomed round an azalea on his kick scooter, narrowly dodging me.
“Cheers!” the kid yawped as he rode back into the mundane.
I jumped. I still couldn’t get used to British children. He had a voice like a rubber ball being kicked. It just sounded like a put-on – a parody of an adult, and one seeking to offend. I struggled to take it seriously. Post-puberty, the accent was well-worn. It fit to the person, and I could hear its scars – on children, it always sounded posh and scripted to me. Perhaps any accent sounded odd on a child’s lips, when they do not yet fully reflect the culture branded to their tongue. I’d seen those documentary clips of children reciting violent dogma, and this felt like a similar contradiction, an anachronism of personality. Culture was fascinating, but on children cast into it, we could better recognize the ways it restrained us.
It is this culture that brought us gifts like “cheers.” Even once I’d gotten past the child’s tone, the phrase bounced around my mind. I realized it was something we didn’t quite have an analogue for in the States. “Cheers,” though, was probably the most effective route to what “How are you?” or “What’s up?” or even “Hi” were really getting at.
“Cheers” did not expect or want further discussion.17 It was just one person acknowledging the other, crossing paths and seeing them for that one second not as automaton, not as landscape or an obstruction, but as fellow humans. That I had encountered it most when a bike or scooter whizzed by only confirmed this – we in our velocities spoke languages set to different prints, materially obstacles to each other, but we knew we were more than that. It’s how the cyclists remembered to be careful; it’s how they thanked you for playing along.
I liked “Cheers,” because I knew how to respond to it.
I kept walking.
The Japanese garden had been calibrated for meditation. Plants were sparse at its center, which instead featured an ovoid pit of gravel. Two larger rocks jutted out, representing Portsmouth and Mizzura. This was not the map of a war room, but of a loving gardener. The gravel surrounding was raked in smooth strokes, representing the ripples of the ocean.
The pathway made a ring around this world before leading up a hill, its summit a conurbation of the benches. Ahead, a row of bushes obscured the cars speeding past, but the beach was clear just beyond them. This ocean was fifty metres behind me. The ocean was fifty metres ahead of me. I now faced the East side.
A sign had explained to me the zen garden was not to be understood as a sample of nature. Instead, it conveyed the essence of nature. It could still be a garden without plants, for a garden was a human habitat. All you needed was gravel, and you could imagine the ocean. You could imagine the world.
In Portsmouth, the gravel led to the ocean. This island had a shingle beach, with any sand buried deep beneath the pebbles. Walking down the beach was awkward with shoes on; barefoot, it hurt. What peace could I have when every step was a struggle, some bout with the pebbles? I unsettled the land as I walked – it was a show of force. I trampled seashells and mussels and carapaces without even noticing. They were all tumbled together in this terrain, beaten into the rocks. This was a hell of the marine, a hell in that these muted creatures lost any particularity.
I’d felt the urge to take one of these stones, an intense need to add some part of this world to my home, though a notice forbade visitors from doing so. With a beach so big, you’d think it’d be impossible to tell if a few were added or removed, though this was also a country virulently, violently opposed to immigration.
In many respects, England was just like home.
It disappointed me, how much it felt like home.
Really, I’d expected sand. I wanted something finer. I wanted something I could work with and leave my prints in. You could find pebbles anywhere – the sand would’ve been something special.
Along England’s southern coast, beaches formed from the rocks chipped off the chalky cliffs. The waves would have their way with the pebbles, but these would always be buried by new shards from the cliffs. Portsmouth was flat – this hill perhaps the only in the city – though gravel could’ve traveled from the cliffs upstream. However, the bigger cause for the terrain had to do with moraines. Eastney was a young beach. All of the Southeast was. During the last Ice Age, with lower sea levels, the British Isles weren’t islands at all. The abundant marshes connecting England to mainland Europe – a region known as Doggerland – submerged fully just 8,000 years ago. The ocean was still new to this beach, so it was still tender. They hadn’t ground each other down yet. I was new to the beach, too, so couldn’t I be content without the continent?
I could build no castles from the gravel, though why would I need to? It had already been raked for me. The gravel was meant to be absorbed, a channel for reflection. Walking wasn’t always comfortable, but if you just sat there, you would find a seat.
The vast multitude of the grains of sand was breathtaking, but it came at the cost of the individual. Each and every pebble, meanwhile, told a story.
They were young enough to trace their histories, young enough to read. They had not yet been battered by the years, erased and rewritten so much to be a smudge, indistinct from all the others they’d soaked with. The stones had their own size and shape and color, their own grooves and patterns. Running my finger along them, I’d feel something. I’d feel something different.
I could study this gravel, really inspecting it – and I meant it
I wouldn’t be trampled, sitting there. I wouldn’t need to ask people to move their feet, lamenting as they kicked the rocks away. The Eastney beach wasn’t nearly as popular as Southsea. The walkway was narrower, and I had a much better view of the beach itself. People fished. A few had set up tents.
But there was a different life here – here, I saw shrubs. Vegetation tangled up in the rocks with spiralling, leafy arms. I read another sign, reminding me that Portsmouth was unique. Shingle beaches were rare enough to begin with, but on Eastney Beach, life grew among the rocks. A few varied species – poppies, kales, and radishes – had managed to dig their roots deep enough to receive water.
And if they could adapt and grow here, maybe I could too.
The brilliant needles of orange withdrew from our sky, clouds breaking through to blanket the coming night. The coast was getting foggy, yet now this scarlet sprouted from the ground, a fox emerging from the earth. I was awestruck. I didn’t see where it had come from, but that hardly seemed to matter – it made its home anywhere, unperturbed by the fences or the motorway ahead.
The fox I’d seen back home – it knew only to run. Woods surrounded it, and so it knew where to retreat. Here, the fox was forced to adjust, and so it did. It got comfortable. It sauntered in the plot. It swirled its tail, this massive brush. It’s a model, an artist. The fox could paint its own routes.
“Fox,” etymologically speaking, likely just meant “tail.” The animal had become only its own ending, defined by last wisp you see as it wanders. Big, fluffy, wild. In this country, I was the fox.
But I was looking out from the roses; I was looking at it from Japan – in their folklore, it wasn’t what the fox left behind them, but the bounty they led to. Kitsune was of no certain origin, with different theories dating to the classical era. They were known for their metamorphosis, and as they grew older, moving between worlds, the kitsune earned their nine tails. They learned to shapeshift, appearing as women. They learned to speak, and perhaps they even named themselves – some scholars proposed an onomatopoeic etymology, though I had only ever seen them silent. Some kitsune offered guidance, but others would trick you. Even when they helped, they didn’t want you taking the easy way.
I knew I had to move. With the sun setting, the security guard was closing up the gates. Regret again bubbled; the rest of the world wouldn’t move to my late schedule. I heard him remind the few other young sitters it was time to leave, lest they be locked in, and so I stood from my bench, watching for a moment more. Perhaps that was how these namesakes had met their fates; perhaps they were buried under these benches.
Finally, the fox scurried off, darting into a rotund shrub. It had burrowed a tunnel through it, connecting the lavish park to the motorway and, just beyond, the beach. I wondered if it was time for me to stop building up. Maybe it was time to dig. We dug not to make our towers, but to connect.
I could go back, to the street, to my home, or I could follow those other children, squealing as they left the garden. Out the other exit, out to the ocean. To that fox, to that red sun fading into dusk. Did we want to transform? The invitation was open. Just follow it. Just run. Into the grove. Into the highway. Into the water.
My spirit ran, chasing the fox through all its burrows – deep into the rocks, around those flickering stars. I chased the fox into February, into that forest I would never uncover. But this fire would find rest by the river.
In a year, I’d join it.
I’d take a right. I’d be alight.
But in this moment, I had direction; the ocean called.
postscript:
I mentioned to my roommate that I’d seen a fox. She was happy for me, though not impressed – they were everywhere, she told me. They were always much closer than you’d think.
After humans, the fox was the mammal with the widest native distribution. A few species along the polar circle had populations native to both the East and Western Hemispheres, but the fox alone had journeyed south. It was nice, but it wasn’t a good answer – I was giving back a variable that had already been provided.
But she told me to let her know if I needed anything. It was a big adjustment, she was sure. It was hard to assess where I was at – I still didn’t know for sure if I was alright or not. I don’t know how to critique these moving parts until I’ve seen how it all comes together. The shortcomings I believe to see may be some directorial decision that pays off in the end. At times, a clunky narrative device (be it exposition or a minor deity’s ex machina), while unfortunate, may be the most practical route to a thematic summit.
All our days are part of something bigger, and so we answer for both. The question of “alright?” is that you could be either one at any moment, but the certainty is you will at points inhabit both, and there may even be overlap. If every turn is all right, you just end up spiraling.
Could I really claim I wasn’t alright when I’d just started a year-long vacation?
Could I really claim I was alright when I would go a year without seeing anyone I knew?
For so much of my life, my primary goal was just to make some friends, to finally open up around people. And now I had left them all, gambling on something new. It was difficult for me to determine the significance of trading people for place – of trading laughter for travel. I used to play Google Earth, and now it was my relationships I explored in digital space.
We have, I know, just one life to live. This is not a comment on time. I am hedging my bets on time being a false enemy – perhaps we live forever, or maybe we just gain a new perspective. God, after all, does not walk time on a leash; he is outside it altogether.
This is a comment on time and space, and on the astral outside and within.
This year abroad is not forever, for I will leave it at some point. This year is forever, for I will always be able to return. Those rose-tints will eventually steer my schnozz back to this era. I will be able to describe it with the language of a different man, and the questions that had so troubled me will shine as they condense.
So what have I been doing, trying to answer this? I’ve been overcomplicating things, ramming over and over into the castle gate when the servant’s door is unlocked right beside me.
If I’m a gatecrasher, it’s just because I’ve missed this fact. If it seems locked, it may just be the keys confusing me once again. I may have just be keyed up.
I am a guest on this island off the island, but I hold stubborn to my own house rules.
I am the leucochloridium hijacking their question, turning it into a surreal and selfish freak of beady eyes.
But if I’m a proper guest, I think I must agree to their parlance. If I’m asked “You alright?” I should offer up the answer common to this country.
You alright?
Yes, her house. With each step down, the situation had become more desolate – our greetings had become a spar, and our phrasings clearly pitted her as a host and me as a guest. In saying “hi,” I retreated; I’d lost the plot.
See: “How did you sleep?”
cf. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.
My favorite, nerdy example of this is a teenage Robert Macfarlane flew to Belfast just to hear Seamus Heaney read some poems. When they shook hands, MacFarlane made it a week before he washed it. Sometimes I think I’m cool, and perhaps even prodigious, though I’ve never booked a flight just to hear books fly.
I feared the deliverypeople bringing packages once or twice a day. What would I say to them? Would I have to forge a signature for a roommate? Was my handwriting identifiably American? You’re in my spot, the boxes would flap, and I could do nothing to counter their claims. They said Fragile on them; it’d be like hitting a girl.
I wish Maps had a “scenic route” option. I wish it had a “most PokéStops” option, for the nerds. I wish I could put in a destination and a have a slider of whatever length I’d like to walk, and it’d add enough detours to take me. Who says a walk can’t have a loop-de-loop? I wish I could tell it to prioritize streets I’ve never seen before. I wish I could tell it to exclude the murder-streets.
(While editing this, the Maps app updated – you can add custom routes yourself now, and the app will even remember walks you’ve had if you tell it to. Apparently, dictating these essays to my phone isn’t as secure as I’d hoped. I’m okay with Tim Cook reading – but why doesn’t he subscribe to the Substack?? I like seeing the numbers go up (and, considering we’re now at iPhone 16, I’m sure he feels the same)!)
I did once need to hitchhike, though that was just for a couple miles. I’ve picked up hitchhikers once, and for a similar distance – I wonder what percentage of hitchhikers are within 5 miles of home. I wonder what percentage of hitchhikers have homes at all.)
With that said, I do appreciate the convenient access to London. It’s so strange that London is a regular fact of life to some people here, while others wince at the distance. Four quid and a two hour bus ride, and I’m there.
The creek, it should be mentioned, was officially renamed to Portsea Creek (or, in some City Council documents, just “Ports Creek”), for the Portsbridge is no longer so singular. Portsmouth now has three motorways connecting to the mainland (one of which is a roundabout, meaning there are technically four road bridges), though they’re built-up enough you may only recognize them as bridges retroactively. There are two additional pedestrian bridges – one of which, likely the least-travelled, inherited the historical Portsbridge name – plus a railway. That there are now seven connections should raise even more suspicions – the city is trying to subtly, gradually, move back in with its parents. If you scatter your clothes around enough, your mom will eventually do the laundry for you.
Knoxville’s Henley Street Bridge spans 547 meters. One of its tributaries, the quainter French Broad river, still manages to stretch 170 meters wide at the section flowing past my home. I didn’t need a bridge to wade out halfway to its islands, yet the British (or at least their autos) lacked this frontier spirit: At its widest, the Portsea Creek spans 60 meters, but along the middle, bound by bridges, it contracts to a wee twenty-three.
Technically there’s no “color” in the UK, but I digress.
The most substantial wildlife here exists in abstracted form as automotive paraphernalia. The crosswalks are all named after animals – zebras and puffins and pelicans – though I’m afraid it ends up inspiring in me an urge to flee, either gawked at or outright hunted by the drivers on safari. Perhaps they are the prophesied pelicans, and I get scooped into the hood.
It’s an odd system, though a much better incorporation of animal life to the motorway than the American innovation of roadkill.
The fad, I’d thought, was for these beauties to remove their bushes entirely.
“Ineffable” has a similar ineffable Britishness.
British troops stationed there in World War II anglicized it as “Pig Alley,” poking fun at the market for its wares. They planted their memories here, in this fort.
If France were to invade Britain – which seemed an inevitability under Napoleon – they would surely start with Portsmouth. To defend against the French, the British stole from them, copying their semaphore system with swiftly constructed sheds connecting Portsmouth to London. These towers were built on hilltops, each just barely in view of the one preceding. By manipulating rows of arms on the tower, which resembled a cross between a windmill and a pulley, messages could be communicated through code, copied by each tower until London was reached. The whole process was recorded as taking fifteen minutes.
Once Napoleon was exiled, the towers were taken down, but a more permanent setup of seventeen towers was constructed in 1822. Lumps Fort had the honor of being the first of this semaphore network. With sturdier, more flexible arms, the engineers claimed navymen could establish contact between Portsmouth and London in under ninety seconds. However, this was only under the clearest of conditions – it it was foggy when things got Froggy, it didn’t matter how close the towers were. Portsmouth would be too far gone for the semaphore.
Only one of these towers remains today, about halfway along the journey, in a reserve called Chatley Heath.
cf. Frasier.