in a few days, it’ll be the anniversary of my getting officially kicked out of the US.
i always use that shorthand, but in reality, my first visa was denied on march 8 (the day pluto entered aquarius. i’m an aquarius rising if you must know) and my last-ditch attempt to return to the US and nyc was denied on march 23, 2023 (the day my saturn return started).
the first main lesson of this whole debacle is that i refuse to believe astrology isn’t real. then and now, i see no other larger cosmic entity to blame it on but the stars - or the universe, or god, if you believe those are all the same thing.
but it’s been a year since i unceremoniously couldn’t return to the US after nine years.
it’s a good week to do some reflecting - finally, a year after my friends packed up my brooklyn apartment on my behalf, i broke my lease, and i hired movers to move nine years’ worth of accumulated belongings into a storage unit in clinton hill, the earthly possessions i owned when i lived in the US finally arrived at my parents’ house in singapore.
it went to singapore for two reasons: 1. i had no idea if my london move would actually work out, and 2. they just have actual space for my furniture.
my books and clothes and some other personal items are finally arriving in london in may, and then we can consider the whole debacle of janelle’s physical belongings circumnavigating the globe complete.
but a year after i thought my world was over, i’ve found instead a totally new life.
the whole point of an apocalyptic love poem, ie the genre as popularized by ada limon, is the idea that at the end of the world, we find for ourselves fulfillment and joy in the people we are there with. i.e. at the end of the world, we find a new world.
when i thought my world was ending, i found instead a totally new world i hadn’t even considered.
let’s look at it this way. a year ago, i was a “professional” / “career” poet in new york city. i believed my calling in life was my writing, my poetry, and believed that i needed to do anything possible to shepherd my work into the world. i believed then, as i had spent much of my life up to that point believing, that my true purpose in life was my writing. that i was put on this earth to write. (spoiler alert: i don’t feel that way any more. because i find that so limiting!)
a year ago, i had a company i believed in, but kept finding door after door closing in my face. i had a company that i believed would help me facilitate the thing i loved most in the world: poems. i’ve said this about teaching since: i feel lukewarm about it, i know i’m excellent at it (in the right contexts), but in new york it was never more than a means to an end. i believed that people would only pay me to teach, and that i was only good as a writer or teacher. i built an entire company around that, because it was the only way i knew how to survive.
a year later, i left the publishing / literary / poetry world officially and completely. i spend most of my days talking about wine, slashing open cardboard boxes, running up and down stairs carrying cases of wine, and basically talking about wine for eight to nine hours a day. most of my friends don’t know who ocean vuong is, and i find that so hot. it enthralls me. i spend most of my spare time going to see live music, and exploring the DIY music scene. i maybe might start playing bass in a punk band?
when i had my company, i refreshed my email maybe once every ten minutes and willed people to email me, or respond to my cold emails. now, i barely check my email unless it’s for concert tickets.
and you know what? i’m happier than i’ve been in a long time.
my life is a lot simpler - i don’t really buy things, or go out to nice restaurants any more. i spend money leftover from rent on concerts, wine, and my friends.
i look back at the person i was right before i left new york, and i almost feel like she lived in a mirage, because she believed that the only way to live was to live up to the vision presented in the mirage. i don’t have a lot of those values any more, and i have put a lot of distance between myself and the people that convinced me that i needed to live life that specific way.
i am a lot more at ease with myself, and i feel more grounded and authentic. i feel a lot calmer, have a lot more trust in the universe, and am a lot more zen about things. i know now that i am not god - that i have very little control over anything, that i don’t get to determine a lot of big life movements, and that ultimately i have no say in a lot of how my life unfolds. i believe so much in surrendering to the moment and its lessons. and i think that’s made me a lot happier.
everyone in the literary world, whether they are bitter about it or not, says the same thing: do not do it unless you cannot imagine yourself doing anything else. do not do it because you want to be heard, or because you want your work in the world, or because the work needs to be in the world, or because you’re good at it. the only reason you should be fighting tooth and nail to even remotely have a career as a professional writer is because you cannot imagine yourself doing anything else. and if you can imagine yourself doing anything else and being even remotely as happy - newsflash! - you should actually do that instead.
wine has been a surprising discovery. it’s been a revelation for me to realize that i can fall in love with something else again, after i’ve spent my entire life believing that i was only good at one thing, and that i would only love one thing (poems/writing).
before any man, woman, person, before any lover, i was in love with new york. and i was in love with writing. and all relationships end, and though it feels like the world is collapsing when it happens, eventually i found a new love, a new relationship with wine and london.
and so, london is not the first love. but if you’re the kind of person who believes in first loves, we’re probably not that close. because the beauty of life is realizing that you can fall in love again and again, with people, with places, with a different way of seeing the world. and that, like we fall in love again and again, and pick ourselves up from heartbreak again and again, that in moments where our world collapses, there is always a new way of being, and living.