London
CRUMB BY CRUMB
I’m at my desk, like I almost always am at about 6pm, writing out kanji characters again and again. I’m that cunt you heard about that actually learned a language over lockdown, and I’m a man obsessed. Obsessed. Nothing quite compares to how my mind locks in when I’m doing this; my insides glow like blown-on embers and I feel like I’m connecting to something important.
The kanji all have their own individual personalities, but the feeling they try to convey is almost always so multifaceted and transient that they don’t really translate. Progress with the whole thing is mind-fuckingly drawn out, but you don’t realise that when you start; you think you’re coming on leaps and bounds, before understanding dawns and you realise how deep this thing goes. The knowledge comes slowly. So, so slowly. I’m an ant paying endless visits to a mountain of breadcrumbs, mindlessly carrying them home little by little. I don’t even know why I’m doing it anymore; it’s just part of what I do.
But I do know why, or at least I can pinpoint certain things that spike the dopamine. For instance, there can be a blistering sincerity about communicating in another language when you don’t really know what you’re doing. In trying to get across the kernel of what you want to say and lacking the nuance or finesse to tell it in a remotely profound way, you have no choice but to resort to the crude raw materials of the language that you can cobble together. And doing it with someone else like this is exhilarating, moving your languages closer, touching them together but never quite pushing all the way through the membrane of total understanding. The peculiar rush of taking off the English glasses that you’ve always seen the world through – that you didn’t even know were fixed on your nose in the first place – and wading through the sludgy beginnings of understanding all over again like a blissfully ignorant child, contorting your tongue in ways that feel alien, then, gradually, familiar.
VODKA & DIRT
I’m in a dark bar on the side of the road in East London with Reina and Rachel. The pink neon lighting on the sign outside the bar mixes with the nighttime orange of the streetlights and spills through the window onto our little table, bathing all of our faces in a warm sepia, and we’re all wearing black. I order an Earth Martini; when it arrives it’s clear and pink like the neon outside and has a penny-sized slice of beetroot at the bottom. It tastes like vodka and dirt.
Rachel is back from her chic designing gig in Paris for the first time in I don’t know how long, so we’re catching up and she’s telling us both about some guy she was dating recently. “He works in finance, but it’s over now, because he’s still in Amsterdam.” She pauses. “Plus, he’s on a burnout.” What? I ask her if she means he’s got burnout, like suffering from it, but she wrinkles her nose as if she’s from a parallel universe where they don’t say that. “No, no, he’s on a burnout – like he’s been signed off work with stress. He has been for two years, but somehow he’s still being paid!” There’s something vaguely glamorous and aspirational about the way she says it. ‘On a burnout’, like ‘on gardening leave’ or ‘on sabbatical’ – somewhere in-between and open-ended; a place where work isn’t. I stare into my drink; the beetroot slice at the bottom of the glass has gone pale.
When I get back home, I can’t sleep. Reina is breathing steadily beside me and I can hear the trains going by on the tracks in the distance. I’m thinking about work. I actually find myself composing emails in my head and anticipating the replies and then concocting replies to those like some kind of psychopath. Below, a huge freight train hurtles past, and I feel everything shake for a few seconds. Maybe I should embark on a burnout myself. I wonder how long it would be before they stopped paying me. A lot less than two years, no doubt about that.
SNEAKERS ON A SUNDAY
I work through the summer and regret it, because everybody else is in Greece. Back in London it’s a hot Sunday, and I’m in Soho interviewing a guy about his sneaker collection in a small space above a shop. My subject is a quiet man, very distant at first and a tough one to crack open, but I let the awkward silences sit there, riding them out as I pester him with my questions and my expectant smiles, and eventually he thaws.
On my way out, a lad working in the shop downstairs spots my notebook and stops me. “Excuse me, are you a journalist?” he says. “I heard there was someone here from a magazine.” I can only see his eyes above his mask, but they’re so bright and hopeful – he must be half a foot taller than I am, but he’s looking down at me as if I’m made of gold. He tells me he’s 21, about to start a postgrad in journalism, and wants to know how I got started. I’m shocked by how thrilled I am to be asked this, so I give him my potted career history and my email in case I can help him out, and he’s wildly grateful. It makes me think I should be more grateful. When I get home, I book my own flights to Greece.
Later, Reina and I are sitting on the sofa together, watching anime and eating peaches in our underwear. It’s dark outside and the trains are going past again, lit from within like giant glowworms snaking through the city. We’re getting married soon, and we talk about moving. There’s an empty house at the end of the earth, with yellow walls and a high ceiling; we could go next year maybe, just to rest for a while. Reina gets up to make some tea, comes back and lies on my shoulder. The room smells like the candle on the table, churchy and calm, and we watch the rest of the film in quiet. A massive explosion destroys the city, razes the entire thing to dust. The screen reads: “There are chances to be happy anywhere.”
Ashley Clarke is a writer and journalist living in London, and Deputy Editor of MR PORTER.