Street sweeper’s actually sweeping trash off the street because they actually do that here, not just an excuse for parking tickets. It drowns out whatever’s on my headphones so they get stuffed in a shirt pocket. Hustlers on the corner which is weird because rent is £350 a week for a studio flat, but commerce calls and what’s a three pound return trip on the Victoria line against the potential on Wardour Street? Right turn is yuppie-and-tourist after work pubs, left turn is well-mannered English sex shops, nothing at all like what you’d find in America. Right here is a street sweeper noisily cleaning up what’s left of the afternoon market. Me, I’m not turning either direction. I’m interested in the spaces in between spaces, like Indiana Jones said before the crystal skull melted Cate Blanchett’s face.

This isn’t my london, but then there’s no such thing. But I’ll borrow it, even if all that really means is going to BoDean’s for ribs and watching the Pittsburgh/Detroit game. What did you expect? Fish and chips and a bespoke suit? Don’t mind me, man. I’m just passing through.

Nine months in now. I know it well, this city, I just don’t quite feel it. I’ve come to realize it’s not you, London, it’s me, but we can still be cool. I didn’t cotton to Chicago the way I expected to and I suspect that, as much as I like to visit, New York would leave me with similar exhausted shrugs.

I am, after all, but a simple boy from Texas.

I have a book that Kat gave me for my birthday- collins complete guide to british birds, because I’m a fucking nerd and constantly ask what kind of bird is that when I see something unfamiliar when walking through the park. On the pigeons and doves page, it lists the feral pigeon, those ugly birds that possess absolutely no fear of humans after centuries of living in the city, as another name for the rock dove. The difference is where it comes from. The rock dove lives among the untamed cliffs and coasts and by all accounts can even be kinda pretty. But all we get in the city are the feral pigeons, the disgusting, urbanized ones. And this is kind of a roundabout way to make the point, but I had always thought of myself as a feral pigeon, but if there’s one thing that London has taught me with some degree of certainty, I’m a goddamn rock dove. There were times when this would have bothered me, would have inspired fierce introspection, sent me out into the street to prove that I’m a city boy, that the sounds and smells and constant go go gogogo of living among ten million people was all I wanted out of life.

But not me. I am goddamn rock dove.