London midday. Lots of life is happening underground, overground, on trains.
The sound of tunnels. Muted yellow light. Worn-out seats.
The persistent, cloying smell of perfume near Harrods.
The ugliness of Shoreditch, taken over by independent workshops, specialty coffee, acai bowl spots, progressive pop-ups, cafés, ramen shops.
Probably every city has a place like this. East Village in New York. Shoreditch in London. Some neighborhoods in Tokyo whose names mean nothing to tourists.
When I moved to Warsaw, I hid inside the shell of one polished street. I was so frightened, so afraid to open up to people, that I almost never left it.
One acquaintance once told me:
Go to the other side of the river. All the cool people are there. Just cross the bridge.
I was so hesitant until one day I just did it. Now my address is there: unpolished, raw, wild and very authentic. Taken over by rebels of all kinds.
I can fit into polished, upscale places. But in reality, I think I belong to these neighbourhoods.
To artists, anarchists, junkies, intellectuals, hipsters, queers — everyone who somehow gets mixed together there.
Redchurch Street. Brick Lane. Vintage stores. People who seem to be constantly absorbed in some kind of inner reflection.
And I am among them.
Fighting against my shame.
I started writing a long time ago.
I quit when I was fourteen.
I burned all my stories, essays and diaries. Then, for many years, I would only occasionally allow myself to secretly spill out words.
For the second time, I come to London under some pretext, almost without a reason. And, by coincidence, I find myself alone with my reflections, vis-à-vis the city.
Red brick in front of my eyes. Leaves rustling under my feet.
Late summer in the streets.
Calvert Avenue. Pigeons. A light breeze. Fresh air.
Two summers ago, I got sick here. I was day-tripping and started Fertility Story. As usual, I left it as a draft, never properly finishing it.
After London, I sketched a collection of short tales for adults — Perverts. Six stories about miserably fragile beauty that exists beyond normal comprehension. I never started working on it properly.
I was too busy working, making money and trying to build a relationship with someone who made me feel ashamed of the most vulnerable part of myself.
But it never disappeared.
I feel and see things in my own way.
Maybe that is the gift.
And if you are special, you will be lonely. It's not my phrase, by the way. It's a quote from the latest Spider-Man.
Working hard made sense. After all, as we know, female creativity flourishes once you have a room of your own. And it seems that I finally have this luxury: the chance to trip through my own thoughts while sitting at lunchtime in the quiet, cosy courtyard of a church in Shoreditch.
An unhurried Tuesday.
A breeze wraps itself around the heads of the people sitting nearby. They unpack their lunch boxes right on the street, greedily catching the vanishing heat.
For some reason, people can be bloodthirsty towards what they cannot understand or accept. I am no exception.
I have always been afraid of the world of creativity. It seemed uncontrollable to me. That I would lose myself there. That I would go mad.
I was so afraid of it that I locked my imagination behind thousands of locks, boarded up my heart, put plugs into my veins to stop the flow of words.
They broke through when I lost my home.
I decided to heal the trauma and, at the same time, fulfil a childhood dream — to write a novel. I finished it. Ticked the box. And moved on: to build a brilliant career, make money, invest a fortune in an MBA.
But it didn't quite work like that.
Somewhere, a lock cracked. Somewhere, one of the plugs started leaking.
And random texts began flowing through my veins again.
I feel like I am at this strange, critical moment of life where I am learning to embrace my writing and my true self. It is slightly embarrassing and so magical at the same time.
I am learning to be myself without wearing social masks and a wardrobe of statuses. I added more people to my Instagram. There are nineteen of them now.
I started talking about my writing. Sometimes I even share my stories without feeling ashamed.
It feels magical to dance inside this stream of words flowing through my head. Yet there is still so much work to turn it into craft.
In London, I keep seeing people with books. On buses. On the Underground. On benches.
Even now, a middle-aged brunette is sitting in front of me. Pearls in her ears, her wavy hair moving in the wind together with the unruly page of the book in her hands.
They say you can't make money from writing. They say people have stopped reading. They say London survives on the City after leaving the EU.
They say the English rave scene is not what it used to be, and that the compromised monarchy has outlived itself. The voices of reason tell me that I will miss business.
They say I somehow need to reconcile the two parts of myself: business and creativity. So that both can be expressed equally.
They also say a writer should look more often into other people's worlds, transfer them onto paper, create characters and images. Introspection is never enough.
I will come back to that question one day.
For now, I am enjoying my freedom and giving myself permission to write anything.
Perhaps I am going through puberty again. Luckily, when you're almost forty, you do it more gently and consciously.
I allow myself to read, watch, listen, dance and admire other people's gifts.
I imagine Moby sitting with Bowie and Lynch somewhere in a loft in the East Village. It is strange how their figures have reappeared in my life — two decades since I first discovered them. Harbingers?
Probably, I am ready to step into the world of creative people. Perhaps this is my real tribe. And, after all, surrounded by them, I will not go mad.
I wrote most of this piece in the yard of the Actors Church. Some of Shakespeare's leading actors were buried here centuries ago.
I feel strangely at peace here — among my floating thoughts, brickwork, yellow leaves, gentle wind and spirits of the dead.
Maybe one day whatever gift I have will turn into a skill.
That day I will learn to catch the voices of my ancestors, to capture their images. Those recognisable, familiar faces and gestures that reappear across the centuries. Their stories could become a kind of signal, or a key, for those who are in need.
For now, it just feels good sitting here, in the moment — building my own vocabulary through a chain of random thoughts.