One

It's been one month already since I've moved to Dollis Hill. Everything now looks more familiar. The silence in the streets, the rows of semi-detached houses framed with green gardens and black gates, the small food stores in the corner. The first time I've stepped out from the tube station the sun was slightly going down in the late afternoon. My life was a complete tabula rasa. I was like a child who sees the world for the first time. Any small discover filled me up with joy, especially when it was about knocking on a stranger's door. In one month, day after day, I've started filling my life up with the new people I met. New eyes, new laughs, new stories. I've fallen asleep and woken up in a new house for the first time. I've seen the sun going behind the horizon from new windows and I've also seen the sun rising from a double-decker bus. I wouldn't change any single day of the last month. This is where my adventure has started. This is where I've decided to stand still for a while and see what life has to give me. Like a stone in the middle of the river, I stand still with eyes wide open as the water brings twigs and dead trees down to the valley.

The last month has flown away but with an intensity in feelings that is hard to explain. Some things would have taken an entire lifetime to happen somewhere else. I would have reached the same level of consciousness maybe in ten years if I had kept on leading the same life I was living before moving here.   My professor at LJC keeps on telling me that I write with too much passion, too many feelings. "You're from Italy, I know you like to do philosophy. But here, we're simple: describe what you see. And stop  your writing there." He's right, probably my writings go a lot round the houses before getting to the point, but this is how I see life and it costs me such an effort to cut the words down! I wonder what he might think if he read my blog. For sure I'm not the grind of the class, but I'm taking the most out of it, too. Maybe it won't be my way to become a travel writer, or maybe yes, nobody knows. But for today, I want to leave the future apart and just be grateful for all I've had until now. Starting from my dinner, which is in the oven right now.

Piccadilly never sleeps

It's been a while now since I last wrote on my blog. When Life grabs you on its carousel it's so hard to say no! This morning I woke up early, impatient to start a new day. Every sound in the house is new to me. Every color in the light of early morning is a new discovery. The light of the sun seeping through the curtains sweetly tells me it's time to leave the bed and start a brand new day. In the silence of the sleepy house, I carefully walk down the creaking stairs covered with an old-fashioned carpet. The kettle whistles as the water starts boiling, a robin readbreast tweets ''goodmorning'' from the top of the fence in the garden. I decide not to turn on the tv, I want to keep any moment of this new day imprinted in my mind as it is. The green grass out of the window reflects its color into the silent living-room. In ten minutes I am ready to leave. The street is quiet and desert as it was last night when I walked back home. The fresh morning breeze awakens my cheekbones on the way to the tube station. The Beatles plugged in my ears, my mind completely lost in faraway thoughts, the way to Green Park seems endless. There's a man sitting in front of me: he's reading a newspaper. His clock's tictac breaks the silence all around us, I can hear it even with earplugs. A woman standing besides me is reading a book, but she never turns the page. It feels as if the time has stopped, today that I've decided to live it from the very beginning.

Goodmorning London.

Piccadilly never sleeps. And I do feel the same right now. It's a constant beating of hearts and wheels, horns and voices. Tourists stroll down the sidewalks while Londoners try their best to hustle through the crowd. Coca-Cola screen is like a night-sun enlightening Cupid's fountain while high-heeled miniskirted girls cross the road to Leicester Square and Soho. Businessmen in suits and ties carry their briefcases pointing downwards and speaking intensely in their headphones, careless of the unique shades and colors of the buildings in the morning sun.

I don't sleep because Life has been shaking me quite a lot. I heard a clear call and I followed it and it brought me here, in this moment, neither earlier nor before. I stand exactly in the middle of my Freedom. Colors, sounds, people, music, trees, everything up to my senses feels amplified as I'm living all these feelings in the middle of my Freedom. This is the only way to catch the deepest meanings of Life. Night, day, sun, stars, they're the same as they've always been but they're not the same anymore as I seen them through new eyes. Time is even not the same anymore. Once you don't let bad thoughts bother your mind anymore, you start filling up days with plenty of things to do and write and read and talk about. Once you open your doors to Life, surprises are behind any corner and days pass by in the most natural and easy way. And all I can do is being thankful. 

A thousand faces.

Today I've seen something like a million faces. In the tube, in the streets, in the shops, faces everywhere. Young, old, Black, White, Indian, Chinese. People sleeping, reading, listening to music, talking, texting, going nuts. People everywhere. People wearing sporty, poshy, and a lot - A LOT - just wearing... AWFULLY. Sometimes I find myself wondering if they even have mirrors at home. Among all these thousands of people you can easily spot tourists: they are the ones who stop in the middle of the sidewalk or on the zebra crossing because they absolutely need to take a picture beside a double-decker bus; tourists are everywhere, in the corner of the streets, loaded with shopping bags and Starbucks glasses. They are slow: when they're walking, and even when they're about to get a sit on the tube. I noticed that only few of them manage to do so at the first try, because there's always someone faster than them at catching the free seat. London tube is like a monster and you have to fight against it for survival. You have to fight against endless corridors, where the walls are decorated with mosaics made of tiny square-shaped tiles that literally hypnotize you after the first ten steps. You have to keep on walking even when talented buskers are playing beautiful songs and you'd like to stop and listen to them: if you stop, the crowd will just step on you and pull you on the escalators anyway. After spending one hour of my life in such a nuthouse, I arrived in Dollis Hill. It's a very nice neighborhood in the North West of London. As I was early for my appointment, I decided to have a look around and after walking a little bit without any destinations, I found a very peaceful place: Gladstone Park. It's a huge green area on the top of a hill, with walking paths, football pitches and endless green meadows. I was too tired to climb the hill so I stopped on a bench, reading a book. 

Gladstone Park in Dollis Hill.

I was sitting there, with fresh air smoothing my cheeks and this green natural carpet in front of my eyes and I couldn't think about anything else but how life is beautiful and full of surprises: when you're tired of people and noise, she gifts you with a peaceful place where your eyes and ears could finally get some rest.