Chelsea

The light in Chelsea has a particular colour.

It is light and sharp and more light-creamy-yellow than the sun on the Adriatic. It feels fresh. The Chelsea sun has that unfailing today is a new day and all kinds of magic can happen feel.

I had never stayed in, -in- Chelsea. I woke up in Chelsea, I went to sleep in Chelsea, but I would evacuate on the rays of that sun, or on the rain, to go have a go at the day. To go live something somewhere, to have something happen.

Chelsea was this before and after — the nest. The safe, cosy nest — after and before which London happened.

And London is one city that always has people to take you to meet, places to take you to see, exhibitions to visit, the river to walk along, charity shops to jump into and explore. London is full of life.

And Chelsea has this warmth of home. It doesn’t look that extraordinary. It’s quite quiet in its way, warm, not too pretentious on the outside, more small-town feel, but with pretty, beautiful, clean, planted garden fronts and trees, and a sort of safety that can be felt — or rather, the ease of walking in the dark or at night without fretting about bumping into crime.

Chelsea doesn’t hold the fear of other parts of London — or dirt. It is clean and tidy. It has a couple of pubs, food shops. It is only looking at the furniture stores, the soft , squishy sofas, made in the traditional old ways, that have been made possibly for centuries, that one can sort of understand the level.

It is in the softness, the attention to detail, quality of kitchen counters sold in Chelsea — one can understand the way these people, this tribe thinks, — it is not so pretentious as well-made, quality, I mean. There are brands — but all tribes like their brands, different brands for different tribes.

And  this tribe can very well be met in its most cosy, at the Café Nero on Fulham Road.It draws the locals, the regulars — the Chelseans, those who live around the café, in big houses three floors up, one floor under, conservatory behind — to leave their empty, sometimes lonely and melancholy, meticulous houses and just buzz in the same spot to good coffee.

You know when you spend far too much time alone and want to sort of be among people and not necessarily interact. Possibly interact over coffee buying, making conversation. Over the dog jumping up to say hello. Over the book you are reading — which draws an author to talk to you — before they swish out and you swish off too.

Staying in Chelsea this time made me face a part of myself that had been buried in the life since. A kind of life where the Chelsea I remembered not only seemed fictional, but almost rude, something I should not explain, talk about — because it offends the reality I am in.

My appetite for life and beauty has always drawn vicious comments from my own mother about my” needing to go to Mars to be content”. And despite hating the Communists she was born into, she decided she hated the aristocrats she had dragged me to live among even more.

While — I like the aristocrats. And quaint and unreasonable as it may seem to modern thinkers in general — I prefer an aristocracy. I am an artist, and the aristocracy has always patronised the arts — and furthermore, aristocrats do not rob their nation like termites — every single four-year term — on the sly — having four years in which to make it rich, whether it means they go via a jail or not to get there.A regent must leave a country to their children, to their grandchildren. Regents have a history before and after to take care of and not destroy it.

Should I also add, “I like men with hair” — instead of men shaved like prisoners, which also seems very much to go with political structures?

But then I was a Chelsea girl, something — I should keep it  under wraps, right? And enjoy the opposite: the 16th-floor communist flat that trembles, with all the people on top of me, in an earthquake.

But being in Chelsea reminded me of that vivacious girl who never stopped in her long days, from morning till night, her London daily quest, when “Chelsea” seemed the normal.

When those who surrounded me were the kind of men who would one day want to settle in a nice, cosy home with a dog, books, art, carpets, wooden floors, an intelligent wife with her own mind, career and children — and do their own thing too. Travel the world. Read. Move. Grow. Marry, marry with that very English romantic comedy concept of the soulmate: the one person with whom one's talents and gifts in life are supported, and both would prosper and flourish in their things. Maybe contribute to society — do some good in some way.

To claim this in the Balkans is ridiculous. True love. I’m not even sure how many men or women I have heard use that concept here.

Here, what seems to be useful — is to be useful. People are useful, situations are useful, and usefulness breeds use, and usage. Usefulness doesn’t breed true love — it breeds chauvinists and manipulation that abuses love, and can stay together without it — because people are useful. It is embarrassing to claim or look for a soulmate here, I feel.

That is the Balkans. Here, people survive. They are useful to one another. Whereas in Chelsea — where I bumped into the gorgeous ginger Prince at Bujis, or Hugh Grant, on my street — the actor -factory of the true-love romantic comedy —  I feel, there was a potential for something else. A different kind of normal was normal to me then, than what I now think is normal from this place in the Balkans.

And that girl woke up as I slept in Chelsea. As I got out of bubbly baths. As I brewed my coffee in the French cafetière. She remembered herself into existence.

Her spirit entered my now older body, and she lounged around the house like a cat, feeling a feeling that is hard to put into words: a feeling of safety. 

Of recognition. Of all those things I thought awaited me when I was young — but I took a detour into adventure, because adventure was important, knowing deep down that the settling down and growing up would look and feel like Chelsea. Except it did not.

The tour of 20 years to find out who I am and where I come from was successful. I now know. I understand the Balkan War and Balkan cultures better. I understand my two differently limited parents. I understand the systematic, factory-making of many un-empathetic humans- that are produced by kindergartens: abandoned little children, unable to develop fully  without mirroring of parents, at their most sensitive age, develop to survival mechanisms, and can when fully grown have the attitude that it’s ok to trample over dead bodies to survive, who can't even be parents softly, kindly, or real partners, when all that is imperative is personal survival.

The thing is, she re-entered me. This Sunci. The one who likes warmth, cosiness. Paintings on walls. Beautifully scented hand soaps. Soft cream carpets under my feet. Bouquets of flowers. Dialogues. Manners. To be greeted with a kind act. Fine fabric curtains. Feather beds. A passion to do something for the world — to contribute. Delightful expansive vocabularies. Even pubs. This Sunci loves pubs now, even sausages and mash, because she no longer thinks adventure is her personal imperative.

Perhaps I have now graduated from Balkan survival. I have spent years trying to understand survival: how to survive in the Balkans as an artist, the things people do to survive, and the things, people and countries destroy in the process of their own personal survival mission-and why so much of life seemed to be about surviving, the close ones, family- one another.

I never needed Mars to be content. Sunci needs to paint, to talk, to make things, to be useful in the way she chooses to be useful. And she needs to feel safe enough to be herself. She doesn’t want to be forever having to argue that art is important to a society that isn’t there yet. She doesn’t want to be arguing about why having a dog at home is valuable to those who fail to understand. She just wants to make art and have the dog in the home ,without it being weird. 

Am I done with being the wild thing , in the wilderness? With having to prove that I can ride a horse, and a plane, and a car, and cook, and clean, and work where I would rather not, and write ,and exercise, and raise kids and fix electricity, and plumbing, and even bury myself alive  just so that I am allowed to be me?

Perhaps it is safety, and flourishing I am looking for at the end of my rainbow. Perhaps I am ready for that now. The lovely cozy nest, after an adventures of a longer kind — longer than a day. A Chelsea kind of cosey.