prescription for a difficult day

Start with a good cry.

Breathe deeply.  Wash your face.  Follow with a hot cup of tea and some chocolate.

Fill your day with work, and even if yours is the fairly minor task of discussing plays, do it well.

When you've come home, and the sun is sinking, and the chill is setting in, cover your hands in flour and start kneading bread.  I can think of few better ways to confront the dark than standing in a warm and cozy kitchen, a favorite song in the background and dough beneath your fingers.   And don't forget to breathe.


I'll be traveling a little more for the rest of this week - I am flying home for my grandfather's funeral on Friday.  I have already mentioned my Lolo a few times on this blog, but if you'd like to learn a little more about his extraordinary life, his obituary is online.  A few short paragraphs for such a long life!

And now I'm thinking of the way he would greet my sister and me -- "Ah, how great it is to see you," he would say joyfully, "your faces shining with the glory of the universe!"

That's all I've got for you today.

TO DO

SO MUCH

THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO

even if we limit ourselves to free events in central London, it is downright overwhelming.  just plain overwhelming.  Time Out is a regularly-published instrument of terror for me.

It's delightful and fun and all, but I mean, really - every day I struggle with the fact that there are far too many books for me to read in one lifetime, and now I have to face endless lists of fun and interesting and exciting events I could easily attend but will have to miss?

oh, it's all too much... I'd write more, but we're going to run off to see a pyrotechnic tango show...

borough market

Next week, if it's nice, I'll go back and take pictures... but for now, I'll just say three things:

- While I thought we lived in a nice place, I now realize that we should have located ourselves south of the river to shorten our commute to this freaking amazing food market;

- My noble self-restraint in the cheese department has been broken... I did restrain myself to only 4 types of cheese, but I won't tell you how much I spent for them.  And while for the past two and a half weeks we managed to buy barely any alcohol at all - seriously, aside from the requisite pint at the occasional pub, nothing! - that noble chain has now been broken, too.  but the wine shop in Borough has refillable bottles, and you come back each week and fill them straight out of the barrels, and it's eco-friendly, and it's cheap, and it's so cool!

anyway, we just had crisp white wine with some margherita pizzas - yes, I managed to make pizzas with a marginally-functional stove and no measuring cups or spoons; my second-greatest achievement of the day* - featuring amazing fresh mozzarella and I have NO REGRETS.

Furthermore, I think I displayed equally admirable self-control when I didn't buy ANY wild mushrooms.  Not any!  And there were endless basketfuls;

- and finally, I am generally firmly behind the local foods movement.  Very firmly!  Local foods are amazing and you should most definitely support your local farmers.  And there is an impressive amount of British-grown produce available here, and I buy it!  I do!  

But if you are thinking that a trip to the Borough market carries the moral weight of a trip to the local farmer's market, I must caution you that you will find yourself falling in love with olives and oils from "our small organic farm on Sparta" (said in a charming Greek accent) and cheese shipped in massive wheels from the south of France, and a thousand different bottles and cans of ingredients from a hundred countries and every populated continent.  And when you try to persuade yourself that Spain is 'practically local," just stop.  Because you're not there for virtue, you're there for cheese, herbs, kangaroo burgers and Turkish candy.

oh man, maybe I'll go back tomorrow...

*My greatest achievement today was solving this puzzle:



I was stuck on it for two whole days.  Drove me crazy.  But I got it!

Conspicuous not-quite-consumption

I am not a shopper.

When I think of a fun way to spend an afternoon, I do not think, "Oooh!  Let's go buy something!"  When I am in the midst of a massive mall, I feel less exhilarated and more overwhelmed.  Rather than jumping at the chance to go browsing, I agonize over whether I really need a new rain jacket/a hard drive/sneakers without holes in them anyway.  Spending money makes me queasy, and wandering around stores full of things I can't buy anyway usually fills me with furious jealousy or, occasionally, vague disgust.  With the exception of food products and two-dollar thrift shop shoes, I simply do not enjoy shopping, even of the window variety.

And yet, I present to you three scenes, united by excess:

1.  Camden Market on a Saturday morning - thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people.  Tiny alleyways and corridors, a hand on my purse as I push through crowds to find fresh air and a new block of shops and market stalls.  I lost William along the way somewhere, and stupidly left my phone, so with a shrug turn more or less randomly down another aisle, slipping from a food court (four pounds for indian, five pounds for thai, two pounds for a bag of donuts, fresh orange juice for three, free samples of chinese chicken, a man dressed up like a seventeenth-century soldier ringing a bell and advertising, bizarrely, the japanese place) through a door and past a "GOTHIC/PUNK/LOLITA" shop and another leather workshop and an all-things-pot store to yet another vintage district.  I stick my head in the "Dandies" shop to see if William is trying on suit jackets, but nothing, so I shrug and head next door, find a sleek red-and-black dress that would surely fit me - which is a great reason not to try it on, because I'm still not sure how much money we have and I can't go building up a dress collection just yet - and quickly move on.

There's too much - much too much.  Too many shoppers, salespeople, stalls, t-shirts, belt buckles, incense, food, leather jackets, statues of horses, too much of everything.  William tried on a hundred hats before we lost each other, and he's probably found a hundred more.  I am not panicking, but I step outside.  Fresh air, and a t-shirt stall with beautiful printed tee shirts, hand-drawn surreal scenes on the front and I'm keeping note in my head of all the things to come back for once I know how much to spend, and this is soothing - but I'm sure William is back in the warren of stalls, so I throw myself back into the fray and head towards the signs declaring "ANTIQUES," admire the old leather suitcases, and stop in awe at a stall full of elaborate hats and headwear.  They are jumbled in pile like nothing special, but each is different, vibrant, faux-retro and fund.  And I fall wholly and irreversibly in love with an explosion of black feathers and lace that perches delicately on the side of my head.  I put it on and stare at myself in the mirror, remember that I would never have a reasonable excuse to wear it, immediately pu that aside.  Forty pounds.  That's  over sixty dollars.  And I think I... no, no, I can't.  And yet...

But how would I get it home?

But how can I leave it behind?

I turn around to see William at last, across the hall and behind a few horse statues, trying fruitlessly to call me, and I shout - "William!  William!  Don't I need this in my life?"

(The answer, friends, is a definite yes... and it's a wonder that I didn't buy a thing)

2.  Harrods on a weekday afternoon - I drag William around, up the Egyptian-themed escalator, through the scented halls, under carved ceilings and over marble floors, down to the bustling food halls of caviar and lobster and ludicrously expensive cheese, twenty-dollar chocolates and a thousand neatly dressed and ever-smiling salespeople.  He protests that it all seems excessive, and I pout, but, well... there's really not much you can say to that, is there?

What is Harrods?  Well, it's a luxury department store... an exercise in human folly... an enormous waste of resources and energy... a masterpiece.  It started as a small grocery, and is now housed in a truly enormous and extraordinarily intimidating building.  How enormous, you ask?  Try five acres.

The motto: Omnia Omnibus Ubique—All Things for All People, Everywhere.  And they sure do try.

The owners: currently, the country of Qatar.  Price paid: $1.5 billion.  If you ever find yourself staring, bewildered, at Harrods, and wondering how it makes any money at all when 90% of its visitors appear to be tourists, picture a sea of Arab oil wealth, and perhaps it will make more sense.  Also, remember: you say you won't buy something, but step into that food hall and...

Harrods has sold live lions (including Christian, the lion of tear-inducing Youtube fame) and used live cobras to guard shoes.  The story of Harrods is intimately entwined with Princess Diana's death - the owners son was her lover, who died with her - and in the store is a memorial to them both, featuring a lipstick-smeared wine glass.  Harrods does nothing in moderation.

Quote from the former owner:  "This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury's. It is a special place that gives people pleasure. There is only one Mecca."  Yes: an Egyptian businessman just compared a store to MECCA.

And we pass through every level, sink into $12,000 sofas, resist the temptation to touch cut-crystal vases I'd have to mortgage my life to pay for, stand outside the cafes and champagne bars and gape at the prices and savor the smells.  I linger in the jewelry section, gaping like a proletariat at a jewel-incrusted tiger the size of my head, when a salesman - playing at the ludicrous charade that I would be capable of purchasing such a object - kindly explains that it is both a necklace AND a detachable brooch, and what do I think?  I laugh, and tell the truth - it is stunning.

Hours later, starving, we flee - and yes, you must flee Harrods, at some point, for that much concentrated wealth and pretension and sheer ridiculousness starts as overwhelming but ends as oppressive.  But I tell you: if you are here in this city, ride down to Knightsbridge and take a look.  Give yourself time to be shocked into silence by the scale of it.  And think all you like about wealth and inequity and the vestigial benefits of empire-building and the strange allure of expensive names, but also confess: the Egyptian escalator is fantastic, and the fine-crafted jewelry is beautiful, and the food hall must surely smell like Heaven.

(And while it's no marvel that I didn't buy a ludicrously expensive suitcase, shirt or scent, I think we must all admire my self-restraint in purchasing no cheese)

3.  Selfridge's, late at night, after getting lost on Oxford St and tumbling in to the nearest tourist destination.  Selfridge's is  London's second-biggest shopping destination, and one which mostly pales to relative sanity beside Harrods, but for one exception: the Shoe Galleries.  Where I found myself with astonishing rapidity, and from which William vanished even faster, and where I happily wandered

35,000 square feet.  55,000 shoes in stock. 4,000 on display.  Prices from a mere $40 for flipflops up to thousands that I didn't even bother to convert.  A dozen rooms - each with entirely unique architecture and interior design- and the requisite army of salespeople (here, beautiful and beautifully shod).  

I have one piece of advice:  Milk that word "galleries" for all that it is worth.  Do not, by any stretch of the imagination, think of how those seven-inch stilettos would feel beneath your body weight.  Don't wonder what the slouchy-boot silhouette would do to the line of your legs.  Don't think of the relationship between your bank account and the price tag.  And don't - unless, of course, you are supremely wealthy - even start to entertain the idea of buying those stunning silver-and-black heels because "compared to the Burberry boots, they're a bargain"and "I don't REALLY need a computer" - no, no, stop right there.

Galleries of ART.  Pieces of art cleverly designed around the theme of things that could conceivably fit on a human foot.  Pieces of art couched in elegant rooms, bathed soft lighting, surrounded by bright-colored sofas and resting on clever, subtle shelves, clean design at every turn and each gallery carved out into its own little world - a version of reality where everyone is beautiful, tall, impossibly wealthy, and never has to walk anywhere.  Worlds of camel and cashmere, or hot pink with silver studs, or black silk and endless pearls, or leather and steel and a blunt, urban aesthetic, but whatever the scene, pure fantasy.  Ridiculous fantasy.  Absurd and ludicrous and unnecessary - but stunningly creative, and astonishing, and beautiful, as art - often absurd, occasionally ludicrous, surely as unnecessary as any other form of beauty - can  often be.

It's an art gallery where you can touch the pieces, and even - if you have more guts than I do - walk around in them.  How wonderful!  How magical!  How strange!  How... how fun!

(Yes - wandering around a store I could never afford to shop at, just for fun!  Does... does this make me a shopper?)

they CALL it English...

... but the bag of ham we bought came embellished with the bold statement, "still bigs up a bap!"  to which I say: these people invented this language, don't they know that big is an adjective and bap is... what the heck is a bap?

(incidentally, since "bap" - as discovered after some research - refers not only to soft bread rolls but also, affectionately, to breasts, there might be a hidden meaning in that ham packaging.  women of the world, take note)

5. Timelines

I suppose, technically speaking, we all have the same amount of history... the billion-year-old-earth (or 6,000 years, if you like), the birth of humanity, the various exoduses, the rise and fall of cultures - as humans, I guess we can all lay claim to our collective history.

And the history of humanity in the Americas is, of course, a long one - nowhere near as long as humanity in Africa, of course, but still a long and fascinating and often tragic history.

But for me, personally, I have a sense that the historical context for my own life began sometime in the 1700s... maybe the 1600s, but no earlier.  Beyond that, it is the history of other people, and unfathomably long ago.

So I am having to adjust to the scale of history and time in this city, where CaerLudein/Londinium/London has sat at this spot on the Thames for thousands of years, and where a professor says casually "It wasn't much more than 500 years ago when..." and I miss the rest of the sentence for shock that a half-millenium is dismissed as barely any time at all.

(He also said, and I quote, "I have detained you for somewhat longer than I had expected.  I now recommend that we stop for 20 minutes or so."  Oh, British formality!)

4. What's a girl gotta do...

... to get a newspaper delivered around here?

I could get the Independent delivered. THEY do home delivery. But I don't WANT the Independent. I want the Guardian! And hours (seriously... sometimes I get obsessive about things) searching the Guardian's website (sometimes I hate calling people) has persuaded me that they simply don't do daily delivery to individual houses. They don't do it. End of story.

And that it's not JUST the Guardian - it's a British thing!

You can subscribe, of course... in which case you get a pack vouchers to hand to your newsagent! like, OUTSIDE! after you have gotten dressed and gone out in the cold and walked to the tube stop and might as well start your whole day.

So, apparently, some newsagents will deliver papers for a fee. But to find out how that works, I'll have to ask a newsagent. And our local newsagent kind of intimidates me. Also, is usually on his mobile when I walk by.

Okay, and I hate sounding like a stupid American, which is how I imagine I will sound when I say, "sooo, do you deliver? papers? to houses? like, in the morning? every morning? maybe?" So I guess what I have to do is risk sounding like an idiot in front of somebody intimidating. And also pay lots of money. Cultural experience, here I come!


I just would like to read my morning dose of depressing without having to put my shoes on. Is that so much to ask?

3. William's favorite thing about where we live...

is their recycling program. No, seriously.

It IS quite impressive. Camden recycles pretty much everything. They even recycle food waste - so we get the good feeling of composting, but without any work!

Anyway, he's wild about it. Recycling. William's a fan. Now you know.

1: Where we live

We live in Camden Town, in London's Northwest area code, but generally considered part of Central London.  Fortunately, where we live is actually a few blocks south of the Camden Town you mostly see in pictures - the Camden of the bustling markets, canal locks and willow trees, punk attire and raucous nightlife.  Not that it would be a bad thing to live in the heart of that madness, but we're a bit closer to the center of London and while we can walk to Camden Town proper, we get to enjoy somewhere slightly quieter.

Not that where we live is a peaceful little suburban flat or anything... we have a pub across the street and a live-music venue a few doors down (which provides great entertainment even from the sidewalk - one night it will be a glaring delegation of sulky punks, another night too-cool-for-school scene kids, and then some unassuming indie fans.  We never know what sorts of looks we'll get from the sidewalk!).  A bit farther away, there's another music venue - where JANELLE MONAE played shortly before we arrived, my goodness!  if only we'd had better timing!

Besides the access to music, our location is pretty great - it was the clincher when we were deciding between flats.  The library is literally right next door to our row of flats, and the tube stop only seconds away.   Better yet, we're just off of the Camden High Street - High Road is British-talk for Main Street, I hear - and can walk to a wonderful, wonderful range of stores.  Food, of course - two big grocery stores, a Thai market, several street greengrocers, a few discount shops - but also tools, lighting and electronics (which it doesn't SEEM like we'd need, but British light bulbs threw us for a loop), about six thrift shops, pharmacies, hair salons, a gazillion pubs, cafes and restaurants, and even more music venues.  It's a cute little street, with a big random statue in the middle of it and all.

London Blogging, to the faraway towns

Well, I certainly have been terribly remiss in posting... we've been here for almost two weeks, and nothing!   

So let me start:

We're in London!

In the next stage of my 2010 adventures, my boyfriend William and I are spending the fall semester in London with the University of London's study abroad program, taking classes at the London Met as well as courses with other American students.  We just finished our first class (theatre, as they spell it here) today.  We'll have an easy first few weeks, as our Met courses (the ones we'll take with British students instead of with each other) don't start until October, so we'll be doing a lot more exploring of the city over the next few weeks.

 Now, I COULD try to cover all of the last week and a half in one epic-length blog post, but really, who wants that?  So instead, I'll go for the shotgun approach, and try to fling out a bunch of short posts.  I am bad at writing things that are short, and sometimes (read: every month but november) I am bad at sitting down to write  anything at all, but I shall give it the old college try.

True story: I used to think that "the old college try" meant a cursory, half-hearted attempt.  This is the opposite of what it actually means.  Does this reveal something about my own associations with the word "college?"  Or is it just easy to confuse words and phrases for their opposite if you are too stubborn to get a dictionary and try to use context clues?

But already I've digressed.  Let me start again.