londonlondonlondon

day 5. portuguese restaurant.hookah, aka 'hubble bubble'.
day 6. globe theatre: love's labour's lost.

dead tired.


the current globe theater is a reproduction built in about the same place as the two originals. we bought pennytickets, which today are much more expensive, but still only bought us a place to stand.

first week

day 3. hyde park
day 4. london eye

wearing contacts now. everything's so clear!















a sand sculpture from the beach in southwark.

londonlondonlondon

day 1. heathrow.south kensington station.wandered around chelsea.
day 2. south kensington.holgrove.tour of bloomsbury.bus tour of london.highlights tour of british museum.british library.pubbing.

london. the days seem very long and i'm having trouble adjusting to the idea of being spatially distant from home, coinciding where i am physically with where i am mentally, since flying seems like magic. it's getting easier each day.
the british library is my favorite thing. i saw the magna carta, old shakespeare folios, and jane austen's actual handwriting!!! it was so beautiful...and we write our d's the same way, with a lil wing on top. soon i will go see her house and her lil tiny writing table.
a lil homesick...especially for max. saying goodbye to him was sadness of the worst (and best) sort. i would feel better if i had internet on my computer and could check mail a lot, it's not working so now i'm in the chelsea library. will write more later.

my tinyass room in chelsea. hugh grant lives down the street, and his house is guarded by two guys twenty-four hours a day.













a lil used book store in bloomsbury.


'this is a picadilly line train to...cockfosters. please mind the gap between the train and the platform'

six days left

so remember when i said squander before? that's the opposite of what i meant. i meant live in squalor. as in, eat out of trash cans and such.
english is hard.
i'm leaving in six days. have added more books to the list but haven't taken too many of them off. holy shit.
when i'm on the phone indoors, even in (maybe especially in) a place with which i'm already very familiar, i unconsciously walk around and pick stuff up and put stuff back down, end up in rooms that i don't normally enter, inspect objects closely and notice things about them that i never noticed before. i do this a lot at my parents' house, because it's a place where i'm comfortable but at the same time is not my own, and my mother redecorates a lot and likes to keep things where they belong. so when i'm on the phone i occasionally find myself, as if waking from a dream, on the other side of the room with a picture frame in my hand.
debating whether or not to start wearing my contacts again for london. i probably will. but i've justified my discontinuation of the habit by interpreting my view of the world as symbolically Monet-like. everything sort of blurs together; people seem more beautiful, their scars blending in with the rest of their faces, and leaves melt into one another. seeing everything through lenses is as shocking as it is beautiful.
anyway.

packing. already.

started packing today, even though i still have 11 days. 11 days! everything's happening too fast. i've never done this before; what the hell am i supposed to bring? probably have enough money saved to live in london for a few weeks and squander in london for the other seven. free crackers and ketchup packets and water from drinking fountains! learning all the offensive words to say and the ones not to say and trying really hard to figure out the goddam coins. and by the time i'm accustomed enough to comprehend a word anybody says, it'll be time to go home and hear 'chicaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaago' again.
just showed my dad how the coins work. his reply? 'that's so stupid. so stupid.'

'Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration.'
-jj

awake

still overcoming the shock of being awake. a mild form of ptsd: "To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else." i want to be a lion. wearing my sister's shirt and my brother's hoodie; there's something about a loved one's clothes that make me feel warmer and more comfortable wearing them...it carries their scent, i guess. when we were very little we would wear my father's t-shirts to bed (i don't think i ever had real pajamas); they were so huge on us, and there was a special significance to sleeping in the tattered shreds of my father's clothes. now i'm big and i wear my boyfriend's flannel pants that no longer smell like him. that's when it loses its appeal: when you've worn it so much it becomes your own.

london

i leave for london on the 23rd, so i guess this will become sort of a travel journal. lately i've been reading about four books at once, trying to get a lot done in the days before i leave. i walk very fast, and think fast and accomplish tasks in loud bursts of energy, but still feel like i can't keep up. jittery without coffee and finding things to worry about and do when there aren't many of either. reading:
the subversive copy editor,
oxford's brief intro to british politics (summer assignment),
agnes grey,
early poems of adrienne rich.
everyone is telling me i will love london, and everyone is telling me to be careful. so sick of hearing the latter.

MOVING IN WINTER

Their life, collapsed like unplayed cards,
is carried piecemeal through the snow:
Headboard and footboard now, the bed
where she has lain desiring him
where overhead his sleep will build
its canopy to smother her once more;
their table, by four elbows worn
evening after evening while the wax runs down;
mirrors grey with reflecting them,
bureaus coffining from the cold
things that can shuffle in a drawer,
carpets rolled up around those echoes
which, shaken out, take wing and breed
new altercations, the old silences.

Adrienne Rich, 1957

blogging?

bored at work. created a blog. also, a gmail account. i've never been good at journaling; have lots of notebooks with a few vague entries at the beginning and then just empty pages. but the idea of an audience is intriguing, and maybe it will help. more honest with people than i am with myself i think. people lie to themselves a lot i think, but i usually don't lie to other people. usually.

Shell smashed, juices flowing
wings twitch, legs are going,
don't get sentimental,
it always ends up drivel.
~radiohead