undergrowth and overgrowth: life in london

the london leg of my travelling is coming to a close uncomfortably quickly. i’ll be back for one more day on 1st october, but i’m not nearly ready to let it go. i’ve been nearly as busy as ever the last several days, though i’ve begun to learn how to slow down. i’ve gotten VERY good at sitting on park benches and just thinking. it helps.

there’s so much going on at all hours in london that it sometimes feels like nothing is happening. people are moving at such a breakneck pace so constantly that it’s almost like no one is moving at all. so many live in luxury, and so many live on the streets. so much at stake, and so much to take for granted. if everything’s being built back up and renovated, it will all stay the same.

relativity.

i’ve spent a good bit of time considering what i want to do with the rest of my life, and still haven’t gotten any particularly closer to the answer. i love art, but don’t think i am committed enough to it that i could make any money. picasso taught me that in 1932 (thanks, tate modern, for this valuable lesson). i love to write, but don’t feel i really have the ideas to keep me going, or the connections to get me published. i love music, but frankly i’m not very good at it. i do not know how i would solve these problems. maybe something else will come to me.

not divine intervention. maybe mundane intervention, or a lot more reading.

it feels so much like i belong here (at least in the UK generally, though i haven’t seen too much of it yet) that it’s frustrating not to know how i could make it here to stay, especially as the reasons to stay keep seeming to grow and change.

i’ve also learned that the more i think before i’ve left the flat, the more difficult it gets to stand myself up and actually go.

so i go anyways.

and because of that, i have seen a great deal since i last shared.

so, thursday i went back to the tate to go through the picasso exhibit and ended up staying about five hours. mind you, this was after i’d already seen about half of it (told you i was getting better at slowing down).

then i spent the evening out with someone who has been very dear to me for a long while; it was wonderful and confused me greatly, generally throwing me for a loop. typical of me to be leaving soon with more questions than answers.

friday took me, introspective and questioning, to cambridge, which was as perfectly idyllic and sleepy as you would imagine on a late summer afternoon.

it also brought me face-to-face with both a hollister and a pizza hut.

these things were obviously brought here because somebody wanted to make money, but i had the realisation that it’s also because somebody loved them. someone visited the states and went to a pizza hut and thought, i love this, and then brought it back home with them to the second-oldest university in the english speaking world, and now all of the charles darwins and sir isaac newtons and steven hawkings of our time can enjoy a disappointing slice of pizza with a view of parker’s piece (just out of view to the left):

i wonder in turn where i will take the things i love, and where the things i love will take me.

saturday arrived pouting and dragging it’s feet, and i took it to visit the british museum, which was full of things, from very long ago, very far away, or both, which i’m sure many other people and cultures have much more legitimate claims to. but hooray, imperialism.

one of the most inspiring things i saw (which also included, mind you, a 4,500-year-old fertility statue and the actual goddamn rosetta stone) ended up being more mundane. in one of the several rooms focused on the roman empire, a bust of emperor hadrian–best known for his wall and for his fickle and absolute (though very successful) rule–was placed immediately next to that of his lover antinous. like, they were set there, together, on purpose. and the placards explicitly mentioned their relationship. on purpose. outright.

it’s the little things, i suppose.

anyways here’s the stuff that’ll probably be cooler to everyone else:

the next couple of days were ambling, featuring markets and a wandering cat and the largest collection of plants and fungi in the world at kew gardens.

i honestly have seen too much to fit online. the sd card all of these pictures have been going to is full, and now they’re saving directly to my phone again.

today i visited greenwich park and the royal observatory (hello, prime meridian!), and was treated to both this spectacular view over london:

and this piano underneath jubilee park in canary wharf, which honestly felt like it saved my life considering how much i have missed playing music:

i’m going to get ‘play me, i’m yours’ tattooed on my forehead.

then it was off to the museum of london, which was a fascinating tour through the early natives and romans and saxons and plagues and fires and world war bombings that gave it its identity, followed by a somewhat brief but very needed stop in the quiet and meditative destroyed-chapel-turned-garden called st. dunstan-in-the-east.

it was a surreal sort of way to end the day, seeing the real aftermath of the blitz after realising the full extent at the museum. sobering, considering today’s date is the 11th september as well, but inspiring to see the beauty it has become.

the city can almost makes sense, in all its madness.

i look forward to the rest of my journey, but i still manage to wish i had more time here. more soon.