London is shrouded in November fog, dissolving the outlines of buildings and transforming the city into a space between reality and dream. On such days, you feel especially acutely how thin the line is between the material and the imagined.
I write these lines sitting in a half-empty café near South Kensington—a district that will soon become my new home. In a few weeks, I’m moving closer to Imperial College, where my master’s program classes will begin in January. A new stage, a new space, new impressions.
I’ve always been fascinated by the process of moving—this moment of breaking with the familiar and immersing oneself in the unknown. Suitcases and boxes of belongings become a metaphor for transition between worlds. Packing books, I seem to preserve a part of myself, to unpack it later in a new place and see how it fits into the changed context.
This process of transformation has inspired me to write a new story that I’ve been working on over the past few months. It doesn’t yet have a final title, but the main idea has already formed: a story about people living on an island—a physical or metaphorical place separated from the larger world. I want to share a small excerpt:
The island greeted her with a gray sky and the rustle of pebbles underfoot. Waves licked the shore with the monotony of clockwork—measured, endless. Olga Matveevna clutched the handle of her worn suitcase and inhaled the salty air. This place was supposed to become her refuge, but so far she felt only cold and alienation. The house on the hill looked both welcoming and wary—an old building with multiple windows reflecting the cloudy sky.
“Are you staying with us for long?” asked the boatman, pulling her suitcase onto the pier.
“Forever,” she replied, surprised at her own determination.
The island accepted new residents rarely and reluctantly. Over decades, a special way of life had formed here—measured, predictable, protected from external shocks. The arrival of a new resident was an event that disrupted the usual course of time. Her appearance stirred memories of those who had left or not returned…
Work on this text is progressing slowly but steadily. I’m using the working title “Life on the Island”—a story about how past and present intertwine in the lives of people seeking refuge from the outside world.
Relocations have always inspired me to write. There seems to be something of an existential experience in this, from the awareness of the fragility of the usual order of things. By changing physical space, we gain an opportunity to look at ourselves from the outside, to see what remains unchanged in us and what transforms under the influence of a new environment.
Imperial College and the Strategic Marketing program represent another step on my professional path. But at the same time, I’m increasingly aware that my true calling is literature. Perhaps these roads are not as irreconcilable as they seemed before. Marketing teaches understanding people and telling stories that resonate. Isn’t that what a writer does?
Ahead lie months of intensive study, new acquaintances, new challenges. But I’ll try not to abandon the blog and share my literary experiments and observations here.
See you in the new chapter.
“Every move is a small death and a small birth”