a dog's heart

went to a curious opera today, A Dog's Heart, based on a satirical Soviet novel and portrayed with grating music, creepy puppets and three different singers for the dog/man at the center of the show.

William and I debated it afterward, both of us handicapped by a lack of deep knowledge about soviet history in the 20s, I'm afraid, but even if we couldn't quite map all the political arguments, there was a fundamental question accessible to the least russophilic:

What's so great about being human?

I thought the production was pretty straight-forward: it would be an act of cruelty to turn an animal into a human, because what creature, however miserable and doomed, would want to know the darkness in a human soul?

But William noted the ambiguous final lines of the opera, after the dog has been transformed back into his original, happy state as a food-eating, warmth-loving creature of mean appearance - after an interlude as a crude, cruel and vicious man.

"I was lucky," he sings, "We must remember that I was lucky."

Was he lucky to be transformed back into a dog?  Or lucky to have gotten the chance to be human?


It was a Complicite production, like A Disappearing Number, which you might have heard me rave about, and therefore visually stunning.  Never before has a graphic surgical operation made me simultaneously so disgusted and so fascinated.  The entire set was comically immense, making the human characters seem like dolls in a too-large dollhouse.  The dog was skeletal in its hunger, and only slightly more solid after weeks of being fattened; with a human face and suit jacket, it became monstrous indeed.  Projections transformed the same wall into an exterior, the terrifying face of tyranny, the mental landscape of a dying animal or an emerging human, a prison or a religious choir of atheist scientists.  Absolutely engrossing.  And the swirling snowstorm at the beginning was one of those fabulous bits of stagecraft where the strings were visible - as it were - but the illusion completely convincing.

Stay warm, be kind to stray dogs, and don't think too highly of yourself just because you can call yourself human - not terrible lessons to take away -

dull would he be of soul

dull would he be of soul who could pass by
a sight so touching in its majesty -
the City now doth wear, like a garment,
the beauty of the morni-

well, sorry, Wordsworth, it was evening, actually.  We did go up in the Eye at sunset and the views were pretty spectacular, although the spectacle of the tourist trap was uninspiring.  but hey!  the views!  you'd have to be dull of soul indeed to complain about a tourist trap with a sight like that!

Before that lovely sight, we also went to the Tower - yep, we're touristing it up, before we quite run out of time (and before the finals crunch starts!)  It was extra fun because I'm reading Wolf Hall - which is AMAZING and I don't even LIKE historical novels much these days, but SERIOUSLY ya'll tackle it over winter break or something.  Cromwell is the action star of the 15th century and Hilary Mantel is talking to his ghost, I swear.  Anyway, I'm reading Wolf Hall so right now Anne Boleyn and Crazy Henry VIII and all their friends and victims feel like my bffs.  And I went and hung out at one of their favorite spots to get beheaded!  It was cold!


In other news, Wordsworth reminded me of something.   As I think I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been memorizing poetry lately - a few apps on my ipod, a few emails-to-self, and I've got a portable library that I've been transplanting into my brain.  I learn a new, short one every day, and I'm working, stanza by stanza, through The Raven - quite appropriate, and not just because of the Tower's ravens:

Ah, distinctly I remember!  It was in the bleak december/
when each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor

And it is about to be a bleak december here, too - except we have radiators now, of course, which are less ghostlike although they, too, tend to die.

So the question is, why now?  why here?  I've thought about memorizing poetry before - Emily and I had a little contest for a while (by the by, i'm now kicking your butt so hard, you wouldn't believe...).  But I've never before tackled it with nearly this much vigor.  Is it the timing, or is it the place?  Is there something about London that has turned my mind to literature in a way it's never turned before?

Hmm.  I'll tackle that more later.

music

so last week we went, back to back, to two very different musical events, the kind of variety that makes me sigh happily and say "oh the joys of big, culturally rich cities!"

well, I didn't actually say that, but you get the point.

Thursday night we went to the opera and saw La Boheme, the first opera we've seen in London that put me on the edge of my seat.  As a musical performance, par excellence - for its type, of course - a few small figures on the stage, feigning shivers and raising their voices to compete with the full orchestra, the massive coliseum filled with carefully constructed, finely polished sounds.

And then Friday, down to the Blues Kitchen for their array of bourbon and the band on their tiny stage, the long narrow room - what fraction of the coliseum's space, a thousandth? - filled with the fashionably dressed young people of Camden town.  And the reward for our wait was blues like I've never seen it before - four people flooding our ears with sound, a drummer in the shadows, a dorky keyboardist lost in his own world, an aloof guitarist and at the heart of it, the lead singer, alternating shots and gulps of ale between songs, then leaning towards us with his arms embracing his double bass, growling and screaming into the mic.  dirty, raw, pulsating, overwhelming, that amplified bass making the whole building throb.  we were lost.

And then we caught a few hours sleep - then a train - then a plane - a pleasant day in aberdeen, another train, a few more hours sleep, then up to the highlands for the silence and the wind and a wide-open sky, instead.

visions of

I passed an apocalyptic landscape this afternoon.  It was a startling sight, one that made me stutter to a stop and step backwards to stare again.  Mountains of rubble, cold steel, concrete, wire, stormy sky - my warm and idle thoughts, of dinner and hot chocolate and cryptic crosswords, fell out of my head and landed in a heap on the cold pavement.

It's all quite easily explained.  They are building a biomedical research facility across from St. Pancras train station, and I know, because we've had the fliers slipped under our door urging us to stand up and protest before our children die from deadly viruses leaked into the air.  But to be precise, they aren't "building" it yet - the site is a messy, barren brownfield with some tentative jabs made towards flattening and cleaning.  Yellow backhoes and graders sit frozen in the of heaps of rocks and concrete chunks and dirt and metal.  2011 they think they'll start the foundations.

For now the field sits empty, except for the detritus and the unused machines, surrounded by a high fence of narrow bars with a few optimistic signs depicting a clean and glowing building.  But where I walked I didn't pass those pretty pictures - just the sharp steel fencing.  And behind this ugly scar, in the distance, a few squat, rectangular office buildings, dull gray in color, no warm lights twinkling from their windows at this moment, so that floor after distant floor looked absolutely empty.  And behind those blocks BT tower loomed: an alien, an unsettling shape.  It was hard to imagine humans building such a structure, surreal, cylindrical, studded with satellites and antenna - it seemed unfathomable to picture a human inside the windowless, neon-glowing tower.

And behind it all the sky.  I woke up this morning to a London full of fog, low and white and almost as thick as in the old paintings.  By this afternoon the fog was gone, but it left behind a slate-dark sky, swirling - no, frozen mid-swirl - with bilious clouds.

There were no people in this landscape, no warmth, no brightness of color, no sign of cheerful survival.  And as it happened, my personal soundtrack - that is, my ipod on shuffle - had through its dumb mechanical insight landed upon the Decemberists "When the War Came."  So as I was struck dumb by this stark vision, Colin Meloy was whining in my ear: "and the war came with all the poise of a cannonball," and I was shivering in the cold.

And war came to this city more than once, Boadicia burnt it down and the peasants tore it up and the bombers blew it up down and sideways.  And this could be a bomb site, here or anywhere. And even when wars the wars have been kept firmly abroad an infinite iniquities have passed along these streets, and this is a problem with living in a city too full of history - the charming cobbled alleys and noble monuments live beside a multitude of darker ghosts.  And how much does it help to remember these shades of horror, and how much more does it hurt?  Plague and conscription and executions and the gin-soaked destitute, and what can all our words do for you now?

And it's all quite easily explainable, because in my classes, this cold week in November, we are discussing death and brutality - trying and failing to remember how many millions died in the first world war, arguing with careful words around how and why and whether one should teach the Holocaust, debating whether evil ever arrives in the form of Black Dogs and what a single murder means and whether graveyard conversations with the dead fit former characterizations, watching on-stage cannibalisms and reading about failed revolutions, reading memoirs of massacre and rape and reciting the war poems and just this morning on the tube I idly memorized Dickinson, I learned by heart that

success is counted sweetest
by those who ne'er succeed.
to comprehend a nectar
requires greatest need

not one of all that purple host
who won the flag today
can tell a definition
so clear of victory

as he, defeated - dying
on whose forbidden ear
the distant strains of victory
burst agonized and clear!  (a cruel exclamation point, I think)

Ah, it's took the flag, not won -  but I was close, and defeated, dying was on my brain.

(And sometimes I long for the clarity of chemistry classes, where debating the nature of grief and death and the immutable logic of genocide never arises as an academic responsibility - but it's not quite that simple, I know, froth-corrupted lungs could tell us as much.  But for political science classes, then, sociology, or philosophy!  it might be quite as fruitless - discuss the historical causes of atrocities, why they happen, how we can prevent them, sure, as unanswerable as asking how we express them and how words can cope with the strains of our moral demands - but at least it might feel more productive.  because I still can't believe the right words will fix the world.)

So yes, perfectly explainable, quite easy.  With these broken worlds in all the words I've been feeding to my brain, and the discordant murmurs of warfare in my ears, and the cold, nasty weather and brutishly short day, so short at 4 pm the sun was already setting in a colorless haze; with the hulking machines in the midst of detritus, the squat buildings as empty as corpses' faces, the communications tower a gleaming robot outlasting all the rest - no wonder that I was arrested by a vision of destruction.

and I stopped and stared and shivered for a moment, lost and empty.  And then a mother and child passed, this kid in a stroller and a Gap jacket staring in exactly the same direction as I was, out at the broken field and foul sky.  And I wondered, does he see what I see, is he gaping in shared wordless horror? Or does he see three big-treaded yellow caterpillars with diggers lifted to the sky?


And I burrowed deeper into my coat and walked past leafless trees up to our flat.  And here I've sat, for whatever my words are worth.  And now it's time for dinner, and hot chocolate, and a cryptic crossword, and some scraps of happier poetry.

western wind when wilt thou blow

the small rain down can rain
christ, that my love were in my arms
and i in my bed again

anon., 16th century, reading anthropology texts in bed totally doesn't count

Winter has arrived in London, suddenly and surprisingly.  Just last weekend, the streets were friendly -- cool breezes swirled bronze-colored leaves along the pavement, the occasional mild drizzle passed briefly by, all was autumnal and with a bit of mulled wine, rather cheery.  But we rolled out of bed on Monday to face a dreary land.   The thermometers resided ten degrees colder (20 for us heathen fahrenheitists).   The evening's dismally early darkening was made far worse by soaked streets and sad leaves in the gutter, rotting rather than scattering along.   Days later, the cold and damp continues unabated, and glancing out the window makes me shudder

Cold in the morning, cold in the night, and even in midday, a wind that puts the lie to the weather reports (how can they call this 10 C, when I need a hat and two scarves? and at night, how can they say it's as high as 5, when I'm so painfully huddled in my winter coat and two sweaters? )

I think we are now witnessing the London that inspired generations of imperialists to leave this great city for warmer climes... I am growing more convinced that not only was the "white man's burden" pure bull, but so were all the other claimed excuses - money, scientific knowledge, proselytizing, political power, bull, bull, bull.  The Brits just wanted some sun to thaw their bones - or failing that, some snow to justify the cold - anything but this soul-numbing, ear-biting, shoe-soaking gloom and gray!

London Strikes (Not Once, But Twice!)

yeah, i know, the song's about New York, whatevs.

So, here's the deal:  the British government is kinda broke.  How broke?  Roundabouts £960 billion national debt.  That works out to somewhere near $1.5 trillion.  For comparison's sake, the US has a national debt of $13 trillion plus... but we also make a lot more money than the British do (and don't they know it).  So to make the comparison more fair, we can look at debt as percent of GDP, in which case it's about 65% for the Brits, and... 93% for us.  um, yay? we're winning?

The current US position is that this is not exactly our preferred situation, but that in our extended economic slump continued borrowing is necessary - and at any rate, sharply increasing taxes or decreasing spending will really just make everything worse.  Cue heavy sigh.

The current UK position, on the other hand, is WE ARE ALL GOING TO PERISH IF WE DON'T CUT SPENDING.  There's a lot of complicated stuff about coalition governments (somehow one party with "conservative" in the name, and another with "liberal" in the name, have joined forces and are trying to get along.  How that worked out I'm still not clear on) but at any rate, they're cutting spending like... like... like a man trapped under a giant rock might cut his arm off, I suppose.  Messily, painfully, and with much protestation.

[Interesting side note: the British are primarily worried, it seems, that the debt could work its way up to 100% of GDP.  Did you know that after WWII, their national debt was almost 250% of GDP???  250%!  I mean, I remember learning that Britain was suffering after the war, but I really never appreciated just how insanely in debt they were - or how much it impacted them.  Especially compared to the US' post-war boom - crazy stuff].

Anyway, as the UK welfare state is rather well-entrenched and beloved (and hated, simultaneously, by the same people - it's all very complicated) cutting spending is quite difficult indeed.  Nobody likes it, but the cuts are being branded - rather skillfully, really - as "austerity measures" which are "tough but fair," and generally sold with a heavy sigh and a "we'll get through this together, chaps" spirit that seems to hearken back to the post-war bootstrap-pulling bonanza.  And aside from some student protests, which everyone mostly ignores (disruptive drum-banging aside), most people are shrugging and tolerating it all.

This is all background.   The main point is that there is a fair amount of "time to put up with being broke again" happening right now. But when the City of London tries to cut some superfluous transport jobs, the transport workers are having NONE of this "austerity measure" nonsense and are, instead, marching out of their jobs to protest - over and over again.  So the tube lines stop running, and the buses fill up, and people walk to work - anecdotally, I've heard they'll walk for hours.  

Side note: British people = crazy?  Maybe so.  I think they want to prove they could still have the stubborn resolution necessary to handle another Blitz, if necessary, and in the absence of a Blitz, they survive these strikes.  So the surprisingly unhostile public response to this massive inconvenience might, in fact, be gratitude for the fact that the tube workers are giving everybody a chance to prove their quiet endurance.  Too much?  I dunno, what I've learned so far is that everything in the modern British psyche is due to WWII.  Either "losing the empire," as they put it, or being broke for ages.  But back on-topic.

Tonight and all of tomorrow, there pretty much isn't a tube system.  The funny thing is, though, they're mostly arguing over cutting the jobs of ticket agents... and, true story, nobody buys tickets from ticket agents any more.  I mean, I do, but that's just because the machines won't take my 20th-century American credit card (the British are very proud of the fact that their credit cards have a "chip and pen" system that's cooler than ours or something, whatever).  But aside from helping the occasional cash-strapped, very annoyed American like me, basically they aren't doing much.  

Now, I'm not saying the tube workers are all in the wrong here.  I think the city should keep the same number of workers total, but move those 800 jobs to signal-workers. because the signals fail all the freaking time, I swear.  "Signal failure" this, "signal failure" that, and whaddaya know, no central line today.  But I digress.

The point: EVERY MONTH there is a day when London is just in shambles because the union and the management can't agree on these freaking station agent jobs.  Just GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY FOR THE LOVE OF MERCY.

And this weekend, on "bonfire night," full of - you guessed it! - bonfires, as well as loads of fireworks, the firefighters are on strike.  This one doesn't even make sense.  They're striking because management wants them to change their shift schedule so they can check more fire alarms during the day or something.  Seriously, that's one of the reasons.  And they don't want to, because they wouldn't be able to put their kids to bed.   They aren't talking about firing anybody, or cutting wages, or cutting hours or increasing hours - just changing the shift schedule!

Now, I'm not saying that neither side has a point.  I'm sure they both have points.  And I'm sure they could both find SOME way to compromise.  Instead, management has threatened to sack EVERYBODY (yeah, fire every firefighter in London, GREAT PLAN GUYS) and the firefighters have responded by deciding to just sit out the night with the most fires each year.

all I have to say to that is:  PEOPLE DIE IN FIRES.  can you really not find any other day to strike?  really?  none at all?

This week in London, London's public services are on strike.  Up next:  NHS doctors refuse to do surgery, will stand back with their arms crossed and shout insults at the 3rd-year med students who are trying to take their places.

I wouldn't be much surprised. 

ghooooooooosts!

Last night, in honor of Halloween, William and I went on a "Ghost of the West End" walk, subtitled "Apparations, Alleyways and Ale."  It was a rather pleasant evening, not too chilly and no rain at all (downright paradisiacal for London this time of year!), and we wandered all around the theater district and into St. James' Park.  Our guide was an enthusiastic woman who was very fond of "atmosphere" - every little street we went down, it seemed, was "the most atmospheric in all of London!"

The spookiest ghost we heard about, by far, was the ghost of Sellis, the Duke of Cumberland's manservant, who died a grisly death in St. James' Palace.  As luck (or strategic vandalism by the walk guides, who knows?) would have it, the two streetlamps across the street from the palace weren't working, so we were standing in nearly pitch-black darkness, staring at the silhouette of the palace, as this woman told the story... the Duke of Cumberland called for help late one night, screaming that he was murdered, and guards rushed in to find him covered in blood.  After a good deal of panic they discovered that his wounds were only superficial, and he said he had woken up to find a blade stabbing him repeatedly, and as he raised his hands to ward it off, the attack suddenly stopped.  After his wounds were treated, he said, "But where's my manservant, Sellis?"

The guards rushed in to Sellis' room, and as they approached the door they heard a strange gurgling noise.  (Now you have to imagine William going "oooooOOOOoooOOOO!" in your ear to get the full effect.  He did this at every remotely spooky moment.  And sometimes just crossing the street.)

They came in to find him on his bed, throat slit - nearly decapitated, in fact - blood gurgling up from his throat.  Dramatic pause.

The official story was that Sellis had tried to kill the Duke, but halfway through his conscience kicked in and instead he went back to his room and committed suicide.

The unofficial story was that the Duke had impregnated Sellis' teenage daughter, and that the poor girl had committed suicide.  When Sellis confronted the Duke, the Duke killed his servant, and then stabbed himself a few times to make it look like it was the other way around.  Or did the Duke sleep with Sellis' wife?  Or did Sellis catch the Duke in flagrante delict delicto of the homosexual variety?  Those are all rather different explanations, but at any rate,  most people supposed there had been some sort of a coverup.

And now - so they say - the ghost of Sellis walks the corridors of St. James' Palace after dark, his arrival always signaled by a gurgling noise and the sickly sweet smell of fresh human blood...

oooooOOOooooOOOOoooOOO!

William's favorite ghost was the ghost of William Terriss, a hugely popular actor who was brutally killed by a jealous competitor.  While there's supposedly an always-cold spot where he was stabbed (40 times! seems excessive), his actual ghost is spotted standing on the platform at Covent Garden tube stop, but never boarding a train.  The tube stop wasn't there in his life, but the story has it that his favorite bakery stood on the spot where the platform is now, and his ghost is actually just waiting for some buns before rehearsal.

My favorite ghost lives in the basement of Samuel Pepys' house, No 14 Buckingham St.  Pepys is supposed to haunt there, too, but that's pretty boring.  But a few painters also lived there in later years, and supposedly there's a pretty young woman in a blue dressing gown who runs laughing down the hallway and vanishes into the drawing room - ready to pose as a nude model for a painting.

Happy Halloweeen!

Speaker's Corner on a sunny day

This afternoon we headed down to Speaker's Corner - working our way down the London check-list we drew up - and were surprised to find glorious weather waiting for us in Hyde Park.  It was hard, to be frank, to listen to the orators when the sun was shining, footballers and frolicking children were enjoying the green open spaces, and deck chairs were waiting out beneath the white fluffy clouds.

But we tried - Speaker's Corner, after all, is a grand statement on the importance of free speech, and what good is free speech if nobody is listening?  So we can report that there were, of course, proselytizers from all three religions of the book (I had never seen a Jewish street proselytizer before - I thought Judaism wasn't quite so expansionary - but hey, what do I know), as well as an impassioned atheist, loudly mocking the Bible's math (crucified on Friday, rose on Sunday, how is that three days and nights? ha, ha! he said) and a fervent nationalist belittling her hacklers (you are all just foreigners, why don't you go back where you belong)

but the sun was shining on the green grass so we went and sat in striped deckchairs and looked for shapes in the clouds.  Freedom of Speech was buzzing behind us - boisterous but not violent - while a toddler chased pigeons and rollerbladers circled the trails.

How do you think you can come here and be British - you don't belong here!  and how can you leave your own people in your own country, leave them there all by themselves --  she was white-haired and slightly trembling, eyes intimidated by the crowd but voice strong.

Are you born again?  [No...]  Well, what's your problem?  (and old man, and his listeners shying away from him) I'm serious, what's your problem?  You - do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?


but there's no MONEY back there, a skinny, brown-skinned man shouted up at her.

that's two days, tops - two nights, not three - (the biggest crowd by far, for this charismatic man in a winter hat) so, what, can God not count?  (loud laughter)


And you are only allowed in here temporarily, you won't be staying here forever, because that's not the way of things - things can't stay like this - even on her stepstool she's barely taller than her audience-

what I don't understand (an American accent, in a sequined jacket) is why we're here talking about details - why you're going on about three days, two days, three nights, two nights - when what we should be doing is arguing, discussing, putting our opinions out, celebrating that we disagree and learning to live side by side-

But I like it here!  I'm comfortable here!  I'm not going anywhere - I'm staying here forever! (loud laughter)

Are you going to listen to me?  Are you?  (painfully polite tone of voice from this man the charismatic atheist calls 'Minister') Or are you just going to talk - I'm telling you, this "three days" thing, you must understand that the Bible is metaphor, is allegory, is parable...

As the afternoon crept on, the clouds got a little darker, the wind a little colder - it would rain soon, but not before we were safely within the walls of the Oxford St department stores.  The voices stayed surprisingly strong.

"It feels so safe here," William mused.  "Did you notice how the maintenance vehicle slowed down when it got near all the children?"  Like clockwork, a man came by to politely request payment for the chairs.  People were eating picnics, playing with their babies.

There was murmuring behind us, and a cluster of synchronized motion.  Men across the park laid out prayer mats on the grass or gathered on the bare asphalt, kneeling down for salat al-asr, the evening prayers.

Go back to where you came from, shouting the white-haired woman, still going strong, and her audience replied in a loud voice: NO!

Angela Merkel has declared multiculturalism to be dead, but the prayers in Hyde Park continued unabated and undisturbed, groups of men facing Qibla- reciting, Allahu Akbar- bowing, prostration, and again.  The soapboxers and the hecklers didn't pause for a moment.

The atheist had changed his tactic, preaching now on the unjustly low salaries of police officers and teachers, this time to no rebuttals.  We walked by, the wind a little too chilly, now, as he talked of cuts and government responsibility, and we left the public park, walked past public art and under public monuments, back into the British public space where debate is, while legal, considered rather uncouth.  And maybe I'd have some thoughts about that but I've put off my homework long enough.

cuts, veils and gypsies

These are interesting times to be living in England - or in Europe - but then again, is every place, always, an interesting time to be living there, if you look hard enough?  I suspect so... though I am hardly convinced... but at any rate, one needn't look hard here and now.

Today, during my anthropology class, we were terribly distracted by the sounds of protest in the streets outside as a march slowly gathered strength, furiously decrying the brutal cuts that were finally announced today.  They've been prognosticated for years, and the coalition government has been bracing the British people for them for ages now, using language strongly reminiscent of the Blitz: we're all in this together, sacrifice for the sake of the country, buckle down and we'll make it through, that sort of thing.  "Tough but fair" is the rather well-crafted slogan they've chosen, but some folks seem hesitant - but based on my observations, despite the protests, most people here seem to think that, unpleasant though they might be, something is necessary, isn't it?

So the cuts are inevitable, just like it's inevitable that unless a miracle is flying our way, at some point America, too, will have to tighten our belts... but it sure isn't fun, and students are disruptively banging on drums to mark their disapproval.

Of course, this is nothing compared to what's happening in France - here in London I've yet to see a single car on fire, a single violent battle between hooded youths and cops, a single freeway incapacitated by furious lorry drivers.  No, the protests in London - protesting massive cuts across almost all areas of government expenditures - are NOTHING compared to how Paris reacts to a threat to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.   Yes, you read that right.

But how do Britons respond to this difference?  A flatmate, a professor and a newspaper columnist all agree: "We have a lot to learn from the French."  I kid you not!  They wish that they had the gumption to set a few cars on fire to express their displeasure - figure that if they were willing to go quite that far, maybe they'd get the amount of time off the French do - but I suppose it's just not in the British character.  They don't think it is, anyway, and maybe that's all that matters.

Meanwhile, of course, a deeper conflict seems to be brewing - yes, even deeper than this very meaningful encounter between socialism and capitalism, the welfare state and the deficit, the bleeding hearts and the empty wallets of the state - even deeper than that, there is a serious crisis of liberalism all across Europe.

Did you know that Angela Merkel has declared multiculturalism to be dead?  That France - having already banned the niqab in public areas - has proceeded from alienating Muslims to directly ejecting the Gypsies?  The Roma have been cast out of France, and if that seems like a headline from five hundred years ago, well.  Welcome to modern-day, liberal, tolerant Western Europe.

In Sweden, the neo-Nazis have broken into parliament.  The Danes beat them to it.  In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders is being put on trial for vicious anti-Muslim speech - protecting free speech vs. punishing a xenophobic demagogue, and half the populace doesn't seem to know which side to root for.

Did I mention that Angela Merkel has declared multiculturalism to be dead?

Meanwhile, the Guardian asks, "Whatever happened to the good Europeans, those nice folks in small northern countries who liked to think of themselves as the world champions of liberty and tolerance?"  But I would argue that Britain has not yet decided where it will fall on the spectrum - the immigration laws have been tightened, Americanized, even, and while the country rallies behind a reality TV star of questionably legal presence, it also debates the death of a deportee and how much responsibility the state bears towards new arrivals, and - of course - the headscarf, the niqab and the burqa.  Britain debates with less vitriol, fewer bans and much more politeness than the Continent is displaying - once again, no cars on fire here - but not, I would argue, with a clear impending verdict.

It's as though Western Europe is asking: Do we continue the grand cultural experiment of liberalism, multiculturalism, religious tolerance and polyglot international cities?  Or do we throw it aside, kick out all Muslims (if you think I'm exaggerating, you haven't been reading enough about the Geert Wilders trial) and brace ourselves for war?

Keep an eye out - the public's fickle opinion could yet fall either way.

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.