back from Old Blighty

I don’t think I’m going to write a detailed entry about the trip on my blog, like I did with my last London trip. For some reason, I just don’t feel up to it. But I can summarize here:

Thursday, 11 February: Despite the record-shattering two blizzards that pummeled the DC area on the 6th and the 10th, my flight was miraculously not canceled and I made it to Dulles with minimal road hassle. Who knew I had access to such luck?

Friday, 12 February: Mylene picked me up at the airport and took me straight back to the flat. We relaxed a bit and I showered and then I hit the road. I went to Goldsmiths, Deptford, and Greenwich, but couldn’t eat spring rolls and chips at my favorite chippie because I was inexplicably nauseous. Then I went to the Whitechapel Gallery (modern art) and a really cool vintage shop somewhat nearby. I really wanted to buy a retro British Airways flight attendant satchel but couldn’t rationalize paying £45 for it. I learned later that those satchels are wildly popular with London hipsters right now, so I’m glad I didn’t buy one! I perused through Spitalfields Market and devoured a pasty from a stand in Liverpool Street station, even though I still wasn’t hungry and felt nauseous. At this point I bought a trillion trashy magazines from the exact same WH Smith in Liverpool Station where I bought all my trashy mags last time. Then I headed home.

Saturday, 13 February: Mylene went with me via bus to Victoria Station; I caught a train to Brighton and she went to her nearby Spanish class. On the bus we passed the Fulham grounds where Chelsea FC plays; there was a match about to take place so the streets were awash with blue-clad fans. There were also eight million policemen in riot gear standing around, and some were on horses who were wearing riot shields over their eyes. HOT. I wish I could’ve snagged a picture! Brighton was lovely and we even saw the sun for a little bit. Panos picked me up at the station and we went straight to lunch at a vegetarian Indian buffet. He took me to Brighton Pier, down to the beach, over past the Royal Pavilion, and through the Brighton Museum. We went through The Lanes (the very cool streets filled with indie, funky shops) and then took the bus to his house so we could hang out, drink tea and eat McVitie’s biscuits, and watch the semi-finals of some reality dance show. I got to meet his cute English Springer Spaniel, too. Then we took the bus back to the station and I caught a train back to Victoria and headed home.

Sunday, 14 February: I met new friend Will at South Kensington station and we took the tube to Abney Park cemetery in Stoke Newington. First we stopped for a typical English breakfast at a cafe (okay, it wasn’t so typical for me, given that mine was a vegetarian version) and then we schlepped the long schlep to the cemetery. We wandered around and took pictures and then caught a bus to King’s Cross and took the tube to Covent Garden so I could finally buy my lampshade at the London Transport Museum shop. We poked around the market for a while, then took a nice walk through the neighborhood and took the tube to Harrods so I could buy thank you gifts for Mom, a souvenir for Olivia, and look for things for the cats (to no avail; they already owned all the decent toys I saw!). We took the tube to...somewhere...and then took a bus to the house he shares with two roommates. He made us tea and we watched some stuff on his computer while he downloaded a shitload of postapocalyptic TV shows and movies onto a flash drive for me. After that I miraculously found my way back to the bus station and took that to Victoria, where I caught the tube home. At night Mylene, James, and I went to a lovely pub near their flat for drinks. It was delightfully dead in there and they played a weird range of music (The Carpenters, Oasis, a cover of a Miley Cyrus song, and so on).

Monday, 15 February: I went to an amazing digital design exhibit at the V&A (unfortunately it was choked with children who hogged all the interactive displays) and then to the Saatchi Gallery, which is all contemporary art. I grabbed two sandwiches from Pret a Manger and ate them in a park outside the Saatchi next to a footie pitch where a group of posh kids (their school bus was a freaking Mercedes!) played footie. I gave pigeons my crumbs and it was very nice. I made a last-minute decision to take the tube to Westminster and walk the Embankment all the way from Westminster Bridge to Millennium Bridge (it’s a long haul, but I always enjoy walking it). I walked across Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, where I checked out an exhibit in the turbine hall which was basically an enormous black box that you wander through. One side of the box was open, giving ambient light that took away from the scary/challenging aspect of the whole thing. Plus there were kids racing around inside, pissing me off. It was a bit disappointing, to say the least. I crossed the bridge back over to St. Paul’s and decided to go inside for the first time ever. Then I saw the price (it was like £13, and my money was running low [I still had some shit I needed to buy]), so I decided to scrap it. I can’t believe I still haven’t been inside! But it ain’t going anywhere, so I’ll get inside at some point. I took the tube to the University of London main campus and bought a t-shirt from their student union (since Goldsmiths is part of UL). I combed through the campus Waterstones for some books I wanted and snagged one of them. I stopped at Piccadilly Circus on the way home to check out another big Waterstones and managed to find another one of the books I wanted. At some point during the night I got sick and some puking ensued; it was rather abrupt: it hit and then passed and then never came back. Hmmm.

Tuesday, 16 February:  I took a bus to Hammersmith, then took the tube straight to Heathrow from there. I got there two hours before check-in, perfectly timed, which gave me enough time to pick up a few more souvenirs for friends and magazines. On the flight home I had an entire row of four seats to myself, which was divine, but screaming children in my section of the cabin detracted from the joy I felt at all that lovely legroom. Still, at least I was able to drown them out with earphones and Virgin’s fantastic movie/TV programming range.

Things I wanted to do/see but didn’t get to do/see: visit Absolut London ice bar, go back to Highgate Cemetery, take a Blitz walking tour, hit the Chinese restaurant near Highgate that sells vegetarian fish and chips. Maybe one or two other things, too.

All mornings and evenings were spent relaxing with Mylene at her flat. I had a really great time with her and she was a fabulous hostess.

So, all in all, it was a really good trip. I felt a weird disconnect to the city that I really couldn’t explain. Like I wasn’t fully there. Who knows. I still love London profusely and truly believe it to my spiritual home, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t fully emotionally there. Honestly, I still feel that way even now. There’s a lingering disconnect and malaise that will hopefully pass soon as I resume the shackles of an ordinary life.

song heard most recently before posting: Patterns—Simon and Garfunkel

xenophobia is such an unbecoming look

This morning brought me another one of those pesky “Damnit, I wish I had my camera!” moments. The cloud pattern can best be described as looking like TV static. I’d never seen anything like it. Then, as the sun rose, the static flushed a lovely shade of pink. Upping the ante, a clear symbol was carved in the corner of the staticky field—one that changed as the clouds shifted. First it looked like an OT, then a b with a slash through its stem, and then just a regular b. Or a sperm cell.

A conversation between some friends and me on Facebook the other day:

AK: Well I just saw my first status about the telethon for Haiti and how it was on so many channels but we can’t take care of the people here...it tells you then to repost as your status. WTF???? Do people not realize how poor Haiti was before the earthquake? I fucking hate ignorant people.

ML: And the hot thing is, I bet the people bitching about how we should take care of Americans first were the people out protesting health care reform.

AK: Exactly! Someone else just posted another one. Do they not realize that the earthquake wiped out all hospitals in the city???? These poor people can’t even get medical attention!!!! I am just so saddened and disgusted by this.

ML: I believe if you are getting your body parts hacked off by a handsaw sanitized with vodka, you deserve some American dollars.

JB: People bitching about American dollars going to Haiti are ignorant asshole fools. Missy, you’re right, although they’re whining about our money being used to help foreigners instead of Americans, they were probably the first people to bitch about healthcare reform meant to help Americans. And I’ll bet none of them make any effort to donate to charities helping the American poor.

If foreigners don’t help Haiti, then nobody will. Then the country will be left to rot. It isn’t like America, where when one part of the country is devastated by a disaster (say, the Gulf Coast in Katrina), the rest of the country can step forward with money and supplies. The parts of Haiti not destroyed by the earthquake are incapable of helping the parts that were destroyed because they are dirt poor themselves. They don’t have any money or supplies to donate.

AK: oh here is that status update that has me so fired up!

America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. 99% of people won’t have the guts to copy and repost ...this

JB: Grrr. Who posted that? I’ll bet it’s someone who considers him/herself to be a devout Christian.

JB: Seriously, if you’re THAT upset about America being “neglected,” then do something about it. Donate some money to a charity helping the poor in Appalachia, donate some time to a local homeless shelter or soup kitchen. And then give some money to Haiti, too. Just because you help out some poor Americans doesn’t mean you can’t help out some poor Haitians, too. Also, regarding the people bitching about the TV benefit for Haiti, a sad but true fact is that no TV station is going to give up valuable airtime to a commercial-free benefit UNLESS a major disaster happens. NBC isn’t going to randomly hold a primetime TV benefit to help homeless people in LA or hungry people in Kentucky. I’m sorry, but modern society doesn’t work that way.

What those people are failing to remember is that TV benefits WERE held for Americans in the past. Have they forgotten Katrina and 9/11? Giant multi-channel benefits were held after both events. And there are plenty of foreign disasters that don’t get shitloads of American aid and American telethons. I don’t remember much happening after China’s massive earthquake in 2008 or Pakistan’s massive earthquake in 2005.

The day American citizens and the American government stop giving money and stop holding telethons for victims of catastrophic disasters in foreign countries is the day I’m packing my bags for Canada. I really don’t want to live in a country where people say “Tough luck” when a country is knocked to its knees, just because that country isn’t America.

If climate change unfolds as predicted, there will come a day when every country will be affected deeply by disasters (drought, mega-hurricanes, tsunamis) and Americans will barely be able to help themselves, much less foreigners. But until that point, we are still in a position to help less-fortunate countries when they are stricken by terrible disasters.

I love how so many people insist that we non-religious folks are amoral, and you can’t have morality without religion. Yet it is often the non-religious folks who are bleeding-heart do-gooders and want to help other people.

This xenophobic nonsense really irks me. I wonder how many of those people are first in line to complain not only about healthcare reform, but the US welfare system in general. I wonder how many of them are screaming that Obama is a communist and a socialist and bitching about their tax dollars being used to sustain government assistance programs

This brings to mind all the pro-lifers who go to excessive lengths to prevent abortion, then wash their hands of the baby once s/he is born. They want to slash government assistance that could help that unaborted child eat three meals a day and stay in a warm home. They want to keep socialized healthcare out of American borders even though that healthcare could be the one thing keeping the unaborted child healthy, strong, and, somewhat ironically, alive.

song heard most recently before posting: Barfly—Ray LaMontagne

Hawaii Five-Uh-Oh

Odd, but it’s now looking like I’m going to Hawaii in April instead of the Faroe Islands in August. My friend Kendra lives in Honolulu and I recently learned that she and her husband will be transferred to Seattle in May; if I want to see Hawaii on the cheap (free place to stay, no need for a rental car, buy groceries and cook at home instead of eating in restaurants), the time to do so is now. An opportunity not to be missed!

Admittedly, I’m always drawn to colder, cloudier climes, and, as such, Hawaii has never been at the top of my destination list. At the same time, never having visited a tropical location—not even Florida—I’m finding myself increasingly intrigued by the prospect of swimming in water bluer than the sky, rather than the murky Atlantic surf I’ve always known. Palm trees? I’ve never seen them. Well, no, maybe there were a few in San Francisco, now that I think about it. But to be surrounded by palm trees, pale ocean, and impossibly lush mountains? It seems exotic beyond all reckoning. Plus, as a Lost fanatic, I’m really chomping at the bit to tour the Lost set before it gets dismantled. And black sand beaches. I really want to see a black sand beach. Iceland has them, but unfortunately, I didn’t get to see any while there.

That’s another thing about Hawaii that bewitches me: the fact that it’s like Iceland’s strange twin. They’re both islands born from violence. Both have black sand beaches and volcanoes. Both are teeth-clenchingly expensive. One’s the sunny blonde twin, the cheerleader, the popular one who always gets her man. She is spring and summer rolled into one. She is flowers and ice cream cones and light. Nobody disputes her beauty; it’s a given. The other is the dark-haired gypsy twin, feral and unpredictable. She sits in the back of the classroom and never says a word. She’s cold, barren, brittle, some might say. Others are more diplomatic. She’s edgy and mysterious, a bit artsy, they allow. Not everyone appreciates or even sees her beauty, because it’s a dark beauty, an unfettered beauty; it has teeth. But it’s there, and oh my god, it’s so succulent and unrestrained. Seeing it broke my heart just when I thought I had no more heart left to break. And yet, at the same time, it also made me feel more alive than I had in ages.

Of course my loyalty lies with the latter twin. Still, I’m curious about the former. I’m curious about what it would be like to briefly alight in her magnificently dazzling world. I know it’s not fair to paint Hawaii with such common brush. It is vibrantly exotic; it does have a primal, dark energy lurking beneath its radiant face. But I think that, on the whole, it’s a safe, popular destination viewed in terms of its warmth, beaches, surfing, and fancy drinks. It’s seen alternately as a romantic destination and a foolproof fun-for-the-whole-family locale. That’s really not the case with Iceland, which, aside from being a paradise for outdoorsy types, remains stubbornly indefinable.
While there, the promise of skydiving will hook its finger at me and lure me into its fold. Ever since I went skydiving in 1998 I’ve been eager to do it again. The experience was incredible, even over the boring mid-Virginia landscape. Imagine jumping over Oahu. Imagine Diamond Head, white sand, and pristine blue water below. I think it’s well worth the $150 price tag.

I’ll need to work out the logistics of this and purchase a plane ticket once I’m back from London. Things will just be too busy and chaotic until then.

Maybe, like Stella, I can use this tropical location as a backdrop for getting my groove back. The groove I never really had, truthfully. Maybe it’s time to find it.

song heard most recently before posting:
A Caution to the Birds—The Frames