“In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.”

—Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

I woke up with a tender ember of sadness burning behind my eyes. I ran my errands (groceries, laundry, library) without joy and then fell back into bed, blankets over head to block out the light. The ember glowed on, fanned with time into a tiny flame. But then a stern voice said to me: “Extinguish it!” So I got up and jumped on the first bus that pulled up to the stop outside my dorm. Impulse, like a hot firebrand to the backside.

The bus deposited me at Hyde Park Corner in the middle of the sunny afternoon. “Well, here I am,” I thought. “Now what?” I began to walk and had just reached St. James’s Park when a boy about my age approached me and asked for directions to Hyde Park. We both had a laugh when we realized he was the Londoner and I was the American, yet I knew my way around that particular area better than he did. Out of boredom or curiosity or pure human interest, we took a walk together. Under the shade of a large tree and in the company of a squirrel, we chatted for a while about life, London, this moment of June. I was alone, then I was not.

After we parted ways at Trafalgar Square, I headed over to the South Bank to see a performance of contemporary classical music by the London Sinfonietta. I was alone again, enjoying a book on the terrace overlooking the Thames, when I spotted a boy from my music class. It turns out he was performing with the music collective, and other Goldsmiths students were involved as well. Shortly after I took my seat, another classmate popped over to say hello and later filled the empty seat beside me. I was alone, then I was not.

And so, my friends, a day that began with a tender ember of sadness transformed itself into an unexpected assembly of faces both old and new. Now as the hour nears midnight, I, like Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, can’t help but marvel at life, London, this moment of June…