Remind me of that day ~ Brick Lane and I, we parted ways. A sense of something ending and a sense of Autumn on the soft-sharp winds…
It was one of those air-perfect days, when everything was just on the cusp, the beginning of life it felt, the passing of the last 8 years, seemingly held luna-like in that one Octobral sky…
What was held here within these streets?
What memories of footsteps trodden on many a Saturday morn? On a Sunday jaunt, still clutching head? What memories of laughs and stomach-doubled, hand-elbow-crutch, the grime of cigarettes on hands stamped with ink stains from the night before?
What memories are here?
Restaurants I’ve seen shut and close, bars I’ve seen, eking out a living from the beginning. 8 08 Whole Years.
Eight days and days of nights and rays of sun that permeated by grasping breath that little basement room.
We shuttered out the sun which sang on bottle-tops and grim-shuttered corner shops. How I loved you Brick Lane, cacti shouts and yells and glaring jar of drums and bells.
Peace.
Peace.
Peace. Piece of crime that’s quiet for a while. 4 AM ~ 5 AM. When siren clocks are kept by their ‘complices. Clocks and couples slumped in doorways stumped with wooden panelling in its 18th century eves. That’s when it’s quiet. In Georgian squatters’ dreams. Between the ears of many a head who lies upon a bug-warm bed ~ believe me, I know how that feels. To be loved by begs and bugs and your own true love, all within your basement bed. True love’s had your weary head.
Nature’s rest.
For everything feels natural here.
Naturally filled with fake champagne and coconuts with holes. ‘#HipsterGoals’, whatever that means.
I mean, what’s the point? Of loving somewhere so much you can’t leave, what does that achieve? Apart from debt I couldn’t afford, dreams I couldn’t believe, but you ~
You know what? I wanted to leave. I had breathed this air, this dream. I had achieved
Everything I wanted to here. It was time.
It was time to take my mildewed things and turn my hand with clean-palmed spring towards the life I wanted now.
For it was Autumn
and the leaves are
turning
golden-brown.
This town, in the pale October night, takes flight.
Grimy dreams are over now. And a new one
just begun.
If you would like to visit Brick Lane I recommend the following:
The Food Markets – particularly on a Sunday
Vintage clothing and traders market – also on a Sunday
The Carpenters Arms – one of the best pubs in London
The Beigel Shops – both of them*
*Get the salmon and cream cheese bagel with black pepper and lemon to cure a hangover
Start from the bottom of Brick Lane (entrance via Osborn St next to Aldgate East station) and work your way up.
In Love&Light, FS XOX
A Daughter of Nyx 