My time in London is coming to a close.  Already!  The three days here have flown by.  I can't believe that tomorrow morning I will be in Dubai, with Rawaan and Annie.  It feels like a marvelous enormous present waiting to be opened, so marvelous and enormous you can't do anything but stare with wide eyes.

Lots of walking over the last two days: yesterday I went to the Tate Modern, walking there along the Embankment, and then wandering through looking for the Rothko Room.  It was the last place I looked, of course, but that was okay because they cycle their permanent collection and there were lots of new things to see.  Today we went to St. James' Park and up into Mayfair and down into Belgravia.  I wanted to see the great old squares, to gather finishing details for my romance novel.  Christian accompanied me (he had school and errands on Monday and Tuesday so I wandered alone) and it was a different experience.  When I find a square I have been looking for, I meander all around it, and then sit usually, and stare at the houses, and take pictures, and scribble in my notebook about the air and the other people around.  Christian is more goal-oriented.  When we got to Grosvenor or Belgrave Square, he was immediately ready to turn around and find the next place, while I sort of sighed and followed more slowly after him, my head turned over my shoulder to see what shape the windows are, what color the facades.  He did save me a lot of aimlessness though, and my feet thank him for all the buses he got us onto.

Apparently LiveJournal is blocked in Dubai, so I may not be able to post about the rest of my trip.  Rawaan can access it from work, but I'm not sure if I will get around to stockpiling entries for her to put up.  So if I don't post here for the next two weeks, don't worry: I have not been kidnapped by terrorists.  I am just in a county where speech is not entirely free.  I'm not sure about Flickr - I will try to update photos regularly.

A wonderful day that completely made up for the mattress debacle last night! 

I wandered from Charing Cross Station through Trafalgar Square, Chinatown, Neal's Year, the British Museum, Russell Square, the British Library, and then back down through Bloomsbury, Charing Cross Road, Soho, and down Regent Street to Picadilly Circus.  My feet hurt (now). 

I've remembered the smell of London, and the way my heart beats faster here when I encounter something particularly wonderful.  I am overcome with the fact of being here.  How I love to simply sit in the middle of a small square, on a bench, watching the fallen leaves and the tiny red flowers blooming from beneath them, the statues, the sunlight coming in and out, the men in pink button down shirts eating lunch, the fountains, the skeletal trees, the old buildings with their faded brick and rows of white windows.  Or in the cafe, where I had tea from white china, and you never have to ask for milk, it is just understood.  Or in the British Library, where the beautiful old books live, where I heard Gertrude Stein reading a poem, and T.S. Eliot, and looked at manifestos from the 1910s, when everything seemed possible, when that century was as young as this century - only now we are postmodern, and believe in nothing, certainly not ourselves. 

Pictures of the day here.

Off to bed.

According to my computer it is 1 pm at home.  That makes sense, since it is 9 pm here (in London).  My body does not understand this distinction however; it doesn't understand much right now besides the desire for sleep.  Unfortunately, my dear host bought an air mattress "with a built in inflation device" only the inflation device turns out to be a pump, which you have to pump by foot, or hand, in a really careful and specific way, for at least a half an hour.  I have already been pumping, taking turns between various limbs, for about twenty minutes, and the mattress, while puffed up, feels like there is nothing inside if pressed on.

My host, Christian (a friend from San Francisco who is now attending the London School of Economics) went to a movie with his roommates, at my urging, because I thought it best to go to sleep early, and it would be quieter and easier to do so if he was out.  He appeared to be under the impression that the mattress would inflate itself.  I am approaching the end of some kind of very very short rope.  It's my birthday, but feeling bad for all the trouble I am already putting Christian to, I found no easy way to slip this into the conversation, and so I didn't tell him.  I will celebrate in Dubai with Rawaan and Annie, and have already celebrated in San Francisco with my friends there.  Still, I am tired enough that this feels fairly disastrous at the moment: sitting alone in a strange house on my birthday with aching arms and legs and a half-inflated mattress between myself and sleep.

But.  I am in London.  My flight went well.  I found Christian's house easily.  We had a nice dinner at a Singaporean restaurant that happened to have replaced a restaurant Lily and I went to once (the old one had a better name, something about the people's revolution, but this one was still delicious).  On the way home we walked across Westminster Bridge, which has the best view: Parliament and Big Ben lit up against one side of the sky, and St. Paul's against the other.  Tomorrow, assuming I someday get to sleep, I will be rested and happy again, and I will spend all day wandering around the streets, thinking about Victorians and discovering Edward Monkton cards, and drinking tea.

Okay, enough of a break.  Once more into the breach: I will inflate this mattress or fall asleep trying.

My room is slowly disassembling.  (Not really: being stripped of its frippery is a more accurate description.)  In three days, I will get on an airplane and a stranger will start sleeping in my bed.  Only briefly.  One month, even less.  I will only be out of the country for a little over two weeks, which is not so much time if you think about it.  But I'm leaving work for a month.  I'm putting all my odds and ends in boxes to shove into them into the utility closet.  I am preparing to say goodbye to normal life for a little while.

I have been panicking, the last couple days, because I was on the verge of getting sick, sick in a really nasty way that would have made it almost impossible to get on a plane on Saturday.  I didn't realize how much of myself I have hung on this trip until it became endangered: The pieces of me that have been living in London all this time.  The pieces of me that feel right and well only when sitting with Rawaan and Annie, as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration.  The pieces of me that hate going to work every day.  The pieces of me that love watching movies on airplanes. 

The danger seems to have passed.  I am still on a knife's edge, though I think now everything is okay.  And of course, it would be okay anyway.  Even if I had to push my flight back, I would still go.  Even if I didn't go, all of those pieces of me would survive.  They've survived the last year and a half, or longer, and they will keep surviving, waiting for their turn.  But I really do very much hope their turn comes on Saturday.

Work is ridiculous.  I want to say, it will be over soon, I will be gone, but I have a terrible feeling that even though I'll be gone it won't be over, and it will haunt me all through the month of December.  Maybe I am just overwhelmed right now though.  They won't be able to get to me when I am half a world away, unless I let them.

Oh, I finished NaNoWriMo!  Last Sunday.  I reached 50,000 words (plus 90 or so) and have not touched it since.  I have a lot of novel left to go, and I do want to write it, but I haven't had time.  Maybe on the airplane.  Maybe in Rawaan's garden, giggling and smoking shisha and scribbling away.

Feist sang her cover of "Inside and Out" without a back-up band, and trilled words she should have said into incomprehensibility, and danced in her short white dress. Bright Eyes made me happy, though he probably should have made me sad. He sang you say I treat you like a book on a shelf and
When everything gets lonely I can be my own best friend
I get a coffee and the paper; have my own conversations
With the sidewalk and the pigeons and my window reflection
...which is how I feel sometimes.

So here:
"Lua" by Bright Eyes
"Inside and Out" by the Bee Gees (I think) covered by Feist

I'm back at school, in my room. My birthday package from home was underneath my mat this morning (which was very funny looking - I guess the mailperson thought it would be safer under there? though being... a package... it was rather obvious that it was there, even "hidden") and is now sitting by my desk looking at me.

My final essay for creative nonfiction is due yesterday. Most of it is stolen from this blog, but all crammed together:

( The London Skyline )

My parents have officially moved to Salem. I don't know my permanent address anymore. Maybe I don't have one. I am much calmer about the situation than I was last spring. Even though I am closer to graduation and therefore upheaval, I think I feel more rooted here than in London (when I was even in London, since I did a lot of travelling in my time there). I am better able to deal with losing "home" when I am in a place that is also "home" in a way. Not that London wasn't - but it didn't have the same solidity that Brown has and I knew I would be leaving it very soon. At least I have another six months here.

Six months. Oy.

I need to practice my Hebrew. That is, learn even a little tiny bit of Hebrew, since at the moment I have none at all.

A little belated meme from priceofamemory. List 20 facts about yourself and then tag five people to do the same. So here goes:

( 20 very random things you never need to know about Felicity )

Okay, I apologize for the randomness of that list. Anyway. Tag: aznina, steph2137, carlyinrome, fourteenlines and hank_stamper. Go to it guys.

My alarm didn't go off this morning, so I slept through my morning shift at work. In the time I should have been awake and going to work, I had a dream that we stoned a man to death with books. Not really stoning, I guess, but it was far too serious to be silly and make up a name. A bad man, someone who had hurt me and people I knew, and we were punishing him. But somehow once we started throwing books at him, I stopped hating him, I felt horrible. He fell on the ground and I sat with his head in my lap while the heavy, hardcover books hit him, the edges driving into his skin. His pain seeping through my fingers. But he had to be punished. It was horrific. I was so relieved to wake up, to press my face into the sunlit pillows, even though I could still feel it in my lungs.

Not to end on that note, the rest of the day was fine. Our heat is on finally!

Well here I am, home again. In the country anyway. In New Jersey. The trip home was long and exhausting, but I made it, and am now hiding in the one air-conditioned room in the house, catching up on everything.

I bought Harry Potter on Sunday - Rawaan and I went to town (by which I mean "Florence") to get it and then I took a train to Rome to catch my plane. I finished the book before I even boarded the plane to London. Loved it. Too lazy to cut for spoilers, but generally very satisfied with the book, despite the emotional upheavals.

I'm not sure what to do with this journal, since 1) it was meant to be for London, and now I am back for good, and 2) my paid account is expiring this week, and I'm broke. So in case I never make another entry, let me finish on a note about London.

Yesterday morning I took the train from Gatwick, where I slept Sunday night, into King's Cross. I had tea across from the British Library, and walked down Euston Road as I have so many times before, enjoying the familiarity, saying goodbye. I turned on Woburn, a block from my dorm, and was suddenly confronted by how much had changed while I was gone. The steps of St. Pancras Parish Church, a large white church on the corner of Euston and Woburn, were covered with flowers, notes, poems. Goodbyes. I walked slowly past, reading people's notes of sympathy, their declarations of strength, their letters to their loved ones gone. A sharp, clear pain on that sunny morning. Half a block later the street was blocked off around Tavistock Square. I had to go around. In Russell Square, police from other towns were stationed, trying to answer questions though they didn't know their own way around. More flowers in the square, set carefully around the lawn.

In one morning I had more conversations with random Londoners than I had in the whole semester. I spent twenty minutes talking to a policewoman. I chatted with the receptionist at the office when I picked up my luggage. I talked to the cab driver, to a sweet old woman on the bus. Maybe it was because I looked so overwhelmed, sleepless and surrounded by enormous bags, but maybe it was something more - people aware of those near them, the strangers they pass every day, on the street, on the bus. People reaching out to one another.

London was different, but it wasn't defeated at all. The cab drove down through Bloomsbury, Soho, Mayfair, and everywhere crowds of people, going about their lives. I can't wait to go back.

Strange to see the street I walked down every other day on the news, the blown-out bus. They don't show Tavistock Square: the trees, the statue of Gandhi.

We spent the day in Florence, paying too much to sit at a cafe, browsing in bookshops and drooling over paper (though not literally drooling). And writing of course! We did sit and write, so it wasn't a total waste of a day. We also had gelato, not as good as the gelato of yesterday though (avocado!)

We arrived back to news of the London bombings. It shook me more than September 11 in some ways, it feels closer to home. The Picadilly line, and Tavistock Square. I've adopted those places. I heard myself say "I live a block away from there," even though I don't, anymore. It hasn't been long. I find myself nervous about taking the tube two more times, to get into and out of town to collect my bags. What a horrible feeling to have. What a horrible place for this to happen - not that it's okay anywhere, but London is the most multicultural city in the world. Why target it? Why do anything like this, ever? Who is it helping?

I have two minutes to update.

I got four hours of sleep last night, and as a result forgot to add so that I arrived at the airport four hours before my flight leaves. Which is better than adding two hours the wrong way, or arriving late. I read a book (yes, a whole book) in a comfy chair and now I'm wandering around the airport.

I'm leaving London. Everything seems surreal, distant. Last night Lily and I became hysterical over milk and then later I wept.

Have to go. See the world.

So I went and wandered through Regent’s Park for three and a half hours. It was amazing. So warm, so sunny, everything green and flowering and people laying about and playing in the grass and strolling and little children and roses… It completely changed my outlook on everything, made me realize how lucky I am and how ridiculous it is that I’ve been so stressed out when I should be happy and excited. I feel very happy and excited now.

I walked up to the top of Primrose Hill, which has a view of all of London. The London skyline isn’t beautiful, it has none of the power of the New York skyline — though it was great to see it, don’t get me wrong. Maybe it’s a lack of familiarity, as compared to the NYC skyline which is everywhere, or maybe it’s how spread out London is, the disunity. Maybe it’s that London is a city I love for its details, for the multiplicity of its faces, the little Soho card shops, the Speaker’s Corner, Tavistock Square, the millennium footbridge, the Rothko Room at the Tate Modern, the bizarre signs and silly street names and tea shops and the diversity of language, skin color. New York has details too, but it’s as much about the idea, the big picture: the skyscrapers silhouetted against the sky. (Though my view of New York may be entirely skewed because I don’t know the city very well). London has to be explored, it can’t be appreciated from a distance.

This is my attempt at summing up. Why do I (why do people) feel the need to sum up our experiences and knowledge, to tie it all together neatly into a conclusion? It’s a compulsion. On the one hand, it can be very valuable to reflect on experience (for instance, my experience of London) and think about how various pieces fit together. On the other hand, there’s the everpresent danger of simplification. An interesting dichotomy, since my summing up of London is that it’s no good summed up.

In other very exciting news, Rawaan talked to the woman we're staying with in Italy and it turns out I can afford to go! (I wasn't sure I'd be able to, at least not for the whole time). Granted, Rawaan is willing to pay 200 extra euros to guarantee that I can go, which makes her the best person ever, and me completely in her debt (though hopefully she won't have to, if I can save money while traveling), but the fact remains that I can go for two full weeks to write in Pescia, Italy.

I took the decorations off my walls. My room is sad now, bare, small. My suitcases are almost full and there is stuff everywhere, little bits and pieces that need to be sorted: packed in a suitcase, in my backpack, shipped, thrown away. I am consumed by questions like: can I fit these books into my suitcase or do I have to go to the store and buy a box to ship them in? Should I just throw my comforter away, or try to haul it to the charity shop? How many shirts should I take with me? What’s the meaning of life?

It’s gorgeous out. I want to go wander the streets of London or lay in the sunshine in Regent’s Park, but — well, actually, maybe I will. Everyone needs a break now and then, right?

Speaker’s Corner at Hyde Park is my new favorite thing. Every Sunday morning (and into afternoon), people come to a large cement area in the corner of Hyde Park with step ladders and stools and tell the world what they think of it. As Amir explained it, there are four basic categories these speakers fall into: Christians, Muslims, socialists and people railing against America. From what I saw, they were fairly accurate but inadequate categories. You can’t understand how fantastic it is until actually being there.

First of all, there are four or five speakers at any one time. People drift from one to another; speakers gather a crowd and then lose it. When we arrived the most interesting speaker was a guy with a sign declaring that he knew everything, who actually may be the only person who really didn’t fit into any of the categories. He said the key to life was “positivity” and that women were naturally more “positive” than men, basically because they’re practical. Men refuse to change on principle, and therefore are not positive. I can’t explain, I can only relate what he said. Then we drifted over to an Islamic man who sounded American and clearly came from the African-American preaching tradition. He was great, because his basic point was that it doesn’t matter what religion you are if you actually practice what you preach — all religions (though he only named the three big monotheistic religions) say one should love one’s neighbour as oneself, and that’s what’s important. He urged people to go to Egypt and visit the prisons instead of the pyramids, to see that even Muslims are hypocritical and as much as the West has problems, they have better human rights. He was very reasonable, but also energetic and a good speaker.

That was all just the warm up. Then the fun really began. A man was standing in the middle of the area without a stool, surrounded by a crowd of people, so we (Lily, Ashley and I) drifted over. The first thing I heard was “All the men have become gay.” This statement was soon explained. Apparently American women with their “education” and their “work” have forgotten how to please men. They don’t know how to kiss men, and they give bad blow jobs. Literally, he said that. American girls (oh, and Germans too) give bad blow jobs. Therefore, all American men have become gay (I guess American men give good blow jobs). As a consequence of all American men being gay, all American women have become lesbians. Or else we were lesbians, and that’s why we couldn’t give blow jobs, and why they became gay. I guess it’s sort of a vicious cycle really.

We were cracking up, I think for obvious reasons, and he spotted us and asked if we were Americans. I stepped forward and said that we were, and he asked if I was a lesbian. I told him no, at least, not that I know of, and he challenged me to prove it, ie come kiss him. Let me point out that this guy was in his 40s, bald, ugly, and incredibly offensive. I declined, as politely as possible. He then turned to the issue of food, by saying that since men are supposed to give up their seats on the tube to pregnant women, he’s been getting in trouble since all women look pregnant now. He then pointed to Lily, Ashley and I and said we all looked pregnant. At which point I told him I definitely wasn’t going to kiss him. Then he asked why women lie, and I told him very seriously that it was our nature, which was the only lie I told him. He then turned to how to fix the “woman” situation. We got through “stop educating women” and decided to go listen to someone else, at which point he yelled after us, “See! Americans!”

After a Christian and a socialist and another “Christian” wearing a bulletproof vest and repeating “God doesn’t love faggots. God doesn’t love sluts,” we drifted back towards the lesbian man, who was now doing a double act with an old guy wearing a huge painted sign proclaiming his love for all and who was busy telling a young married woman that she should leave her husband and run off with him because he would protect her on the streets of London, and because her red hair was so beautiful (meanwhile the lesbian guy was telling this girl and her husband that she lied to him and couldn’t satisfy him). Highlights included the lesbian guy asking another American girl to read a passage from Chomsky, and, after asking her if she could make chips, the old British guy yelling “You have to peel the potatoes!” Also the old British guy denying that America ruled the world, exclaiming “Britannia rules the world!” and then saying very indignantly “I am English! Every bit of me is English! Except these hips.”

There was one woman, who unfortunately was saying that different races had their parts of the world, and should stay in those parts. We decided that men are taught that when they want to talk a lot, it’s important and people should listen, and women are taught to 1) keep their opinions to themselves and 2) be practical, which is why there was only one crazy woman there and about twenty crazy men (spread out over the day).

Oh, and later there was a man who said olive oil would save your sexual potency, and drank some to prove it.

I wore my wellies to the Portobello Road market today, which turned out to be sort of silly since it didn’t rain (it was pouring when I woke up though). The market (in Notting Hill, for those of you who don’t know London geography) was a curious mish-mash: antique silver and cigarette cards and modish clothes and cheap jewelry and tourist crap and framed prints from children’s books and art deco magazines. I made the very practical purchase of some cheap light weight trousers for traveling, which turned out to be less practical when I got them home and found out they are made for people without thighs and I wasted $10. Besides that it was a lovely day: warm and crowded and diverse. Diverse isn’t the word I’m looking for. Multitudinous. What does that mean anyway?

In other news, I hate money. Why does it have to control my life? I think we should switch to the barter system. We could barter hairpins, or happy thoughts.

Hampton Court Palace, according to the publicity posters, is “England’s greatest palace.” It is pretty swank: the Tudor grand hall, built to keep the servants in line and impress visitors (and possible as some sort of compensation), the state apartments of William and Mary, including a room decorated entirely with weapons, gleaming sunbursts of swords, the formal gardens with diagonal rows of sculpted trees and carefully trimmed hedgerows shaping crowns and hearts, and not to forget, the kitchens, extending through fifteen rooms, with mechanical spit-turners and peacocks waiting to be roasted.

Lily and I went down to Hampton Court today, joined later by Ashley and her cousin’s friend who is in town. We partook of tours offered by “members of the court” in period costume, and nudged each other when they talked about people we had heard of. We got lost in the maze, where voices from the center of the hedges quoted Shakespeare as you passed and asked “Can I take your hand?” We had a picnic on the bank of the Thames, beside the boat we were planning to take back to London, but given the time and expense, we ended up taking the train back. A good thing, since we were going to stop at the Kew Gardens in the original plan, and that would have coincided exactly with the arrival of a massive downpour. As it was, we made it to the train station just in time and watched the less fortunate straggle in, dripping.

It’s all down to the wire now. One week left.

The day before yesterday I found out that I don’t have a subletter for this summer, so plans have had to be reevaluated. The conclusion I’ve come to, after much agonizing, is that I will continue with travels mostly as planned (at the moment the itinerary goes something like this: Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Lubljana, Croation coast, Italy but that may change) but after I will fly back to Providence and try to get a job for the rest of the summer. That way I save airfare to and from the west coast, as well as hopefully restoring my bank account a little, and you know, continuing to eat for the month of August. I just found my tentative financial aid package online and it looks like if we get another roommate for next year, thus reducing rent by a third, and I’m careful about how much I spend, I’ll be fine for the year.

It’s very strange to think about not going home until December, and even stranger to think that when I do, it won’t be home as I knew it. I’m okay with this decision until I think about not seeing the girls for six more months, and then my heart breaks. Maybe I’ll make it back — but I can’t see how, given that if I get a job, I won’t be able to leave, and if I don’t, I won’t have the money. We’ll see what happens.

So any plans I have made for August may now have to be altered. I apologize to anyone I’m abandoning. It’s not by choice.

There’s so much to do in the next week. I’m sitting in my room looking around at all the stuff that somehow has to fit somewhere, or be given away or returned or sold. Ach.

I just read Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: a lovely book, quietly tragic and poignantly funny and engrossing. I began it when I woke up this (I’ll be honest) afternoon, and couldn’t stop reading. Who knew a book about an elderly butler could be so captivating? I’d like to see the movie, though I’m afraid it would be disappointing — but with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, maybe not.

I feel a little guilty for sitting inside all day reading, but its gray and rainy out, and I feel absolutely not temptation to venture out. Yesterday I did make it to the British Museum for a few hours. Lily and I wandered around the Chinese rooms, looking at 3000 year old jade and 250 year old enamels of bright yellow and turquoise, colors I always imagined could only be made synthetically. We went to the Egyptian rooms and saw the mummies, perfectly preserved. One body has survived, unmummified, dried out by the desert sand — laying there inside a glass case, shriveled skin and hands and a wisp of hair still on his forehead. We saw the Rosetta Stone, and discussed what of our current culture would be preserved. There’s so much stuff now, so many gratuitous objects, are they going to be saved for two thousand years to be displayed in a museum? We are so obsessed with ourselves now, with recording and documenting, that it’s hard for me to imagine everything disappearing the way some ancient cultures have disappeared — only fragments left, pieced together to create a fragile picture of life. But maybe there’ll be some cataclysm, natural or unnatural — or maybe technology will progress to a point where we can’t access our own records, everything stored on computers will be lost, obsolete.

I started thinking about diaries, and then about blogs — in a way, they’re so much more permanent, because there’s no question of paper breaking down or being damaged — but then if the livejournal server crashes, is all of this lost? (I personally have a back-up, but not of every entry). Does that matter? Do we write for posterity, to preserve? Or for this moment, to help understand a particular experience, a time or place?

The Remains of the Day — while clearly a fictional account — is a glimpse into a world that’s gone, but also a world that continues to affect us, both in terms of the actual history involved and in terms of the human experiences. The narrator’s tragedy and his triumph is his dignity, his immersion in professionalism at the cost of humanity — maybe. Maybe not. What does this novel tell us about the time it describes that a diary couldn’t? Or does it only tell us about the time in which it was written? And will this novel be preserved? We still study literature from two thousand years ago — what will be read two thousand years from now, assuming humans still read or at least communicate stories in some way?

I’m just going around in circles now. Not a terrible thing for a rainy afternoon.

Last night I sat in a dark theatre and did all the things you always want to do in movie theatres but are never allowed to: cheer, hiss, hold things in the air and sway, sing at the very top of my poor recovering-from-a-cold lungs, wave at the screen and give the characters advice out loud. And there were nuns!

Yes, my friends, last night I attended the Sing-a-Long-a Sound of Music.

Fabulous is the only possible word to describe the experience. The show was hosted by a drag queen who gave us all instructions for the things in our goody bags (little white plastic flowers, a party popper, and an invitation to the captain's ball), judged the costume contest (I think the schnitzel with noodles was my favorite), made everything into a triple entendre and told the audience that we weren't in the proper postmodern spirit of the thing. Then the show itself began. Anyone who's seen the movie (and if you haven't, you lead a seriously deprived life) must remember the long and seriously boring though pretty shots of Austrian landscape which go on forever. We livened them up with some livestock sounds, creating the atmosphere. I baaa-ed. When Julie Andrews appeared on the horizon, swinging her little arms, we leapt to our feet and swung our arms, and sang.

Amir was aghast to hear of this (he didn't even get details, just the fact that we went). I however hold it up as a supreme example of kitsch. It's an opportunity to at one and the same time return to being six and be really excited and enthusiastic about something in a way you can never be as an adult, and mercilessly mock your six year old self, without hurting your own feelings - to revel in the silly innocent purity of it all and to recognize that there's something a little sketchy about the Captain's whistle, if you know what I mean.

Ashley and I were first in line at the Globe today, poised and ready at the large wood doors to go sprinting to the front of the stage. Inside, we positioned ourselves dead center, on either side of a small wooden block where we placed our bags and coats. My chin fit comfortably atop the edge of the stage, worn smooth by other chins and arms and elbows.

They performed The Tempest with only three actors (all male), which worked better than I thought it would. I was extremely glad to have just written an essay on the play, because I knew it backwards and forwards, I could picture the lines on the page and think “Oh, he’s being that character now.” There was a group of students behind us speaking Spanish before the performance, and I hope they at least knew the story, because to be a non-native English speaker and unsure of the storyline would probably have led to complete incomprehension.

I don’t think I would normally choose to view a play this way — leaning forward to relieve the weight, ducking to avoid spittle — but it was fun to do the once. They cut some from the play and added a lot of physical — and sexual — humor, which fits in with what we know of the actual Globe theatre, so long ago. From where I stood I could have reached out and touched the actors any number of times. At moments, all I could see was a leg or a foot, and I gave it my full attention — a new way of watching a play. In the middle of the play one of the dancers (three dancers performed with the actors) came up through the audience and needed to stand on the wooden box Ashley and I had put our stuff on. We quickly snatched it off, and stood back a little and felt foolish, and happily amused, part of the performance.

I sat in the Rothko room at the Tate Modern for twenty five minutes, drinking in the pictures. The light in the room is dim, and each wall holds one or two pictures, a set, dark reds and shades of rust blue. I sat cross-legged on a wooden bench and turned my body 90 degrees to see the next painting, and then again, and again, and back. I wrote down the words that came to mind: Somber, isolation, failure, opening, cells, collapse, fold, contact, hemmed.

Upstairs I sat in a room overlooking the Thames and watched the sky darken around St. Paul’s. I began reading for my history essay, about collaboration and resistance in occupied Europe under the Nazis. I read for an hour and a half, as the horror on the pages built. I came to a point where it was too much and slammed the book shut, trembling (a torn baby, torn) and tried to focus on the quiet beauty of the scene before me, the river and the lights and the remnants of sunset. It didn’t entirely work. I’m afraid to keep reading, but if I can’t even read about what happened, how am I supposed to write about it, analyze it? More importantly, how can we remember, so it never happens again? (But it does, it happens and has happened and will happen — no, I can’t think that way, I can’t believe it, it’s too horrible — but I can’t deny, or pretend —) There are no simple answers to the things in this book. Everyone failed in some way, the circumstances force good people into doing bad things — and if they didn’t, they died, or were subject to the worst atrocities, or caused them without meaning to. I find the topic incredibly fascinating — it’s not something Americans talk about much, because we don’t empathize with it — people are either collaborators or resisters — for us or against us! — but it’s not really like that. It wasn’t like that during WWII, it’s not like that, in life, ever. So I guess I’m interested in the topic and disturbed by the actual instances involved. The depths of Nazi evil are — I always think I know the worst, that I’ve heard about that, and understood it, and then something else comes.

When I couldn’t read anymore I went to the top floor and had a glass of wine. The Tate is open until 10 on Friday and Saturday, so I sat at the counter overlooking the river and sipped red wine and tried to make sense of the jumble of things in my head. Two seats down from me two girls from my dorm were sitting, dispelling my (and their) belief that we were each somehow special, that other college students wouldn’t go and have a drink at the Tate Modern. I held on to the knowledge that I was using my time here to full advantage — I walked there through London, I saw amazing art, I studied in an extremely London setting, and I bought myself a glass of wine, like an adult, which I will not be able to do in the U.S. until December. The light went completely as I sat there, but St. Paul’s was still illuminated, untouched by German bombs, or time, or dark.

Today I went to the National Gallery. The Caravaggio exhibit I wanted to see was sold out, and is apparently sold out through its end May 22. I wandered through the permanent collection instead, saw contemporary paintings of London by a man named John Virtue: black and white swaths of river and sky, the outlines of buildings structuring, holding the paintings together, and smog, in gray and black spray. I also saw, among other things, Leonardo’s drawing of the Madonna and St. Anne with Jesus and John the Baptist, and his Madonna of the Rocks — Cezanne’s Baigneuses and Seurat’s Bathers and Van Gogh’s sunflowers, haystacks. I overloaded on art, and bought tofu on the way home.

Ashley came over and we bought tickets to go to Edinburgh after we’re all done. The bus is the only thing we could all afford, so we’re taking two overnight 8 hour bus trips, to maximize our time. Time seems to be in very short supply just now. I am stunned by how full and exciting my future is, and stressed about it, stupidly. I will never do everything I want to do. I need to accept that and simply strive to make the most of what I do do. Sunday we’re going to see Shakespeare at the Globe. Next week is open to me — I should be able to do lots of things then, around London, even day trips. Then I need to write my last essay. The Monday before my essay is due, we’re going to the Sound of Music Sing-a-long. Then celebrating being done, Guys and Dolls with Ewan McGregor, Edinburgh, packing and finalities, and off to the wide world. It sounds so — close, so immediate, when put like that. Like it is all come and past already.

A couple of Lily’s friends from Macalaster are in town, and took us to Edgware Road to eat falafels and smoke shisha. We did the first in a hole-in-the-wall with a small counter and four chairs, which we twisted around so we wouldn’t all be staring at each other’s backs. The shisha, in contrast, was in a huge restaurant, the ceiling covered with jeweled mirrors, the walls in red and green and yellow, and glowing fixtures on the corners of the booths. The waiters negotiated between shishas set at the edges of the tables, buckets of hot coal in hand. We had yogurt drinks and inhaled banana shisha, letting the soft taste of the smoke drift in and out. This is a part of London I have only known from the novels in my London Lit class — in White Teeth, one of the characters goes to sit with the old men and smoke shisha on Edgware Road, watching the women walk past in burkas. There were women at the restaurant with headscarves, and others in tight black shirts wearing too much lipliner, and old men and seventeen year olds in overlarge black sweatshirts with rap star logos on them.

Lily’s friends have both finished study abroad: Neeley is headed home tomorrow with an internship in the Scottish parliament under her belt; Jason has come back to London to live with the Spanish boy he fell in love with fall semester in London. I feel unaccomplished. Moody and craving chocolate — it can only be one thing. The knowledge that hormones are responsible for my achievement-and-boy-and-sugar cravings is not as comforting as it should be.

In other (good) news, this summer is beginning to take (very exciting) shape.

( what I'm going to do with my summer vacation )