Overdrive

I’ve been on a bit of an overdrive recently. Since coming to London a second time, and after the first few days of feeling a little down, i had suddenly realised that time is so short. Part of it was probably because when i finally decided to book some tickets to theatre, i realised that some things were sold out/gone/never to return again. And then i’m starting to see advertisements for events happening AFTER i leave, and that reality is finally settling in.

So i bought a bunch of tickets. I saw Giselle (my first ballet), then i saw Hedda Gabler (which is so awesome i need an entire blog post for it), then Les Mis (at last), and i also got tickets to a viola concert at Southbank Centre (Royal Festival Hall), i’m seeing Neil Gaiman next week, and i have tickets to Love’s Labour’s Lost by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Kid Stays in the Picture (Royal Court Theatre), The Glass Menagerie, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. When my sis comes we should probably catch The Lion King too.

Besides buying tickets i had also gone through the two key big events at my residential college, and talked to more people than i might again in a long time, and realised that it’s a lot better than i had imagined it to be. Maybe because of that i am also now much more ready to meet people — to hear them and to know what moves them and what makes them who they are. It’s kinda exciting. So besides that i’ve also bought a viola and will begin lessons soon with a fellow GCian, at prices a tenth what i would have to pay back home, and i am also reading more than i have since; i am restarting Greek again; i am moving along with my dissertation work; i have plans and some tickets to see a bit more of Europe than i have so far (which is not at all). I also have a place in London’s first ever 10-mile run on 4 June, and i have two friends to go with. So i now also have a training plan. I had also attended a class in my gym for the first time and felt muscles i have long forgotten i had. Just before my class i was so anxious i was cold and shaking, but the first time is always the hardest. i even have a Sunday routine now, and a new hello-friend in church who doesn’t mind working weekends by popping by the lab to feed his insect some sugar when he’s in the area.

There is an energy that comes with a sense of liberation. Or is the sense of liberation from a burst of energy? And all these connections…a show i watched made sense in my Lit module, then someone in class mentions a book i happen to be reading. The theory in one class makes a concept in another class clearer, even though the classes are in different faculties altogether. How else can such serendipity be, if not providential?

In the midst of all of these it suddenly occurs to me too that i had come here to work out my grief; there are some memories that have not yet been handled and are merely tucked away. But that’s okay too. Sometimes things make a little more sense after we look at them anew, with some time in between. And that time will come.