The Sunday Spinster Sermon: 13 Hours Head of Arkansas

Happy Sunday everyone. It’s been a while. I’ve missed doing this but somehow, haven’t been able to find the words. Which for me, is peculiar.

 

I keep writing this. Then deleting. Then writing this. Then deleting. Then thinking about writing and mapping out text in my head with images and links then I don’t write it. I seize up. I don’t know what to say. With the official spinster voice gone, I am at a bit of a loss. Because the thing is, I’ve been in Hong Kong for 6 months now and nothing is quite as it was before. 

I met a wonderful man and had a fairytale courtship but of course reality intervenes, as is wont to do, and jobs and apartments and living on opposite sides of an ocean have to be taken into account. I am accustomed to spinster lonely, but long distance lonely is a new one for me. When I’m feeling sad, I miss the man as I want him to cheer me up, when I’m feeling happy, I miss the man as I want to share the happy with him. 

The hardest thing though, has been making plans. As I enter my sixth month in Hong Kong, I begin my third job this Tuesday. All is change. I live in a great apartment but it is tiny and city bound. It was rented with the best of intentions under the considerations of job number one. As life has moved on this may not be the place for me any longer. When in Hong Kong before, I had a triple bedroomed apartment with a pomegranate tree under the kitchen window and a rooftop with seaviews. 

Here was my home in 2010: 

Daytime

Nightime

Playtime

Traveltime 

Here it is now:

Daytime

Nightime

Playtime

Traveltime

It seems as if I'm in reverse Wizard of Oz. Gone from glorious technicolour to black and white.

I’ve always had a fear of enclosed spaces. I used to have nightmares as a child that I was incarcerated for some horrific crime and locked away for years. It was a dream that kept me on the relatively straight and narrow as the fear of being caught was too terrible. 

I once read that Maasai Warriors die when incarcerated. They have no concept of time, so the now is always. The idea of living in such contained space is enough to make their hearts give up on them. They expire. 

Sometimes, in my little Hong Kong Island apartment, whilst snug and cosy, I have a similar terror melt over me. That claustrophobic air. That I’ll be trapped watching Starworld TV for all eternity, waiting for someone to rescue me.  Perhaps this is a Rapunzel complex, but it was infinitely more bearable when looking out over the mountains and seas of Lamma Island. 

But today, I went on a walk. And I got into the nature. And I remembered how beautiful Hong Kong can be. It is green and verdant. It is nature filled. And as much as I love Blade Runner as a film experience, it is not the homelife I wish to entertain. 

My next home shall have seaviews, or mountain views and if it doesn’t have a full time cat, will have frequent visitors. 

Arwen & Aslan in 2010

My new job will be teaching. I’ll be playing with kids with reduced hours. I won’t be feeling sick at 6am when whatsapp messages come in from my designer jewelry firm expressing calamities. I won’t be trapped in my little flat skyping New York until 1am.  I’ll have space to breathe and dream and build futures. Sure, in an ideal world I’d be tucked up with my man right now, and just be happy where I am... but for now I’m dreaming of a balcony by starlight… 13 hours ahead of Arkansas.

Peace be with you.

May you be at home wherever you are.

xxx