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January 31, 2008
Drunk Doesn't Even Begin to Cover It
What I am, is wasted.
Holy Jesus, Napoleon, what did you put in those martinis?
What a fabulous evening. Thank you both. Until tomorrow, when I suspect I will wish I was dead.
Love,
Sally
Posted by sally at 11:19 PM
And It's Officially a Four-Day Weekend
God, I needed this.
Posted by sally at 06:09 PM
SNOW DAY
No school today. All classes and non-academic activities have been cancelled. The university is closed for business due to inclement weather. They're even asking all non-essential employees who are already on campus to go home.
I wonder why they think getting to and around campus might be a problem...
(Taken moments ago out our front door.)
To provide a sense of scale, the magnolia there on the right? (You can see a few of its branches, leaves still on.) Is not quite six feet tall.
Obviously, much of the snow in question was there before. But allow me to use the following three images to demonstrate the amount of snow we're talking about here, both in terms of what's arrived in the last 12 hours and the total amount.
This is Kokopelli. In the spring, he dances among the tulips next to our front steps. He does not move, but stays in that same spot year round. (That bed, by the way, has filled in nicely. I need to tie up the canes from the climbing rose, but it's next to impossible to get in there any more.)
This is Kokopelli yesterday morning, taken from our front window:
Kokopelli this morning, post walk-shoveling. He would be just to the left of the new bits that came off the walk, just inside the curve of the chunks on top of the pile. Only now, I'm guessing he's about 2 inches below the surface. (You get a better look at the magnolia in this photo as well.)
Allow me to point out once again that there has been snow on the ground since Dave and I got home from London 32 days ago. That's unheard of here. We never have snow on the ground for over a month. And certainly not in amounts like we've experienced. I haven't seen the ground in the back yard since we left for England on December 20. On Sunday, it snowed all day. All day. It didn't stop except for about 20 minutes when it sleeted instead. But there was constant precipitation from before 8am until long after dark.
Dave's got a shot up of the house so you can get another idea of what we're sitting in. The piles on either side of the walk are higher than his knees. (I was not about to go outside to take pictures. As soon as I read the school closure notice I'd been waiting for, I changed into fleece pants. I am toasty and comfortable.)
Before I really get myself set to enjoy this gift of a day, I want to post one more picture from this morning. This was taken with the camera resting on the threshold of our front doorway. I think it gives a pretty good sense of just how tall the snow is.
Oh, and by the way. I've been typing and fussing around for over an hour now. I took those pictures almost two hours ago. It's still snowing. Only harder. Dave just went out to shovel the sidewalks. Again.
Posted by sally at 08:23 AM | Comments (2)
January 30, 2008
Margaritaville
All I want is to lie in the sun and let it bake me for a little while. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently, yes.
Pictures of the winter carnage when I get home from campus today. I promise.
Posted by sally at 10:58 AM
January 26, 2008
PhotoHunt: Old Fashioned
A couple of years ago, I discovered the joy of writing with fountain pens. When I work with one of these babies I don't have to press nearly as tightly as I do with a traditional ballpoint. Which means that since I've taken to using them, my penmanship has improved, I can write forever without getting a cramp, and I can write faster. But they're pretty old fashioned. (Though some fountain pens can be very high-tech.)
I've also begun binding my own journals. I couldn't find any for purchase that had the kind of paper I like writing on best (and if I don't have good paper, I don't write; the feel of it is an important part of the aesthetic for me), so I started making my own. The paper is handmade (not by me, it takes long enough to bind the book, thank you, I'm not making the paper as well), the books are handmade--and pretty rough-looking, which is how I like them. They look homemade. But all-in-all, writing on hand cut, handmade paper in a hand bound book with a fountain pen is pretty much not the most modern way to record your thoughts.
So.
Old-Fashioned.
Posted by sally at 10:33 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 25, 2008
On Pride
One of my boys, one of the men I love, opened a show last night. He's played leads before, but this one, this one was special. In this show, I saw him figure out how to be an actor, and it was, well, I'm crying again just thinking about it.
Two years ago, I met him when we were cast to work on a directing scene together. He hadn't been acting for very long at all, but I could tell, even then, that should he choose to, he could go as far as he wants in this business. He's that kind of good. And now, a scant two years later, He is playing Max in Bent. In a performance worthy of anything I've seen on professional stages. My weeping at the end of the show last night was equal parts a response to the story and the storytelling and to the pride I felt in seeing him work magic.
I practically knocked him over with the hug I gave him afterwards. I'm sure it was confusing for a lot of people, given that Dave is also in the show and I didn't do that with him. But this man is like a little brother to me. Yes, there's 18 years' difference in our ages, but not in our hearts, and there was no containing the joy I felt for him, because he got to do that thing, that work he did out there on that stage with such grace and humility and beauty. Which I tried to express over and over again in useless superlatives and incoherent mumblings.
Bless his heart, he kept trying to tell me that his work out there is partly due to the great teachers he's had. But what he doesn't realize is that it's all him. He's had so much to overcome and so much to figure out in the last two years, and he's done it. That's not to say that there won't be hard work and frustration ahead for him, but he's come such a long way. I don't know about his other teachers, I haven't been in the classroom with them. But I know that all I did was occasionally nudge him to look a different direction and let him know I believe in him. As far as I'm concerned, he did all the rest himself.
And for that, he should be justifiably proud.
Posted by sally at 09:20 AM
January 21, 2008
Breaking
Because that's what my mind will do if I don't take one from the grading.
I love my students, I really do. I want them to be the kind of students they should be, based on how smart they are. And I feel like I've failed them because they still aren't getting some of the basics of writing a paper.
I'm sure a big part of it is my fault. I wasn't as strict about it as maybe I should have been last semester, and I thought they might learn from example, rather than through my specifically focusing on how to create a thesis statement and support an argument. Plus, I assumed they were getting that in English Composition. (I still think they should be. I'm not sure why that isn't happening.) Anyway, I can only grade so many papers at a time before I start feeling like the most useless teacher in the world.
So I am grading fewer papers at a time and taking more breaks as I go. Just now? I tackled a job I've been needing to do for over a year. I cleaned out two shelves of my clothes cupboard and got rid of a bunch of stuff I never wear (and won't ever wear again). It says something that I would rather do that than grade papers. And yet, I keep assigning them.
Posted by sally at 01:41 PM
Blowing Snow
There has been snow on the ground since we got home from England on December 30. It's never fully melted away before we got dumped on again. And I must say, if I have to live in a place that has winter, I prefer this kind of winter over the sleety kind.
Anyway, last week we had a nighttime combination snowstorm/high wind situation. It was pretty blizzardy out, what with the teeny flakes falling fast and the 40 MPH winds. And the next morning, the car windows were a bitch to scrape. But the following evening, I pulled into the driveway and--thanks to the motion detector light--saw the results of the storm on our chain link fence.
Pretty cool, eh?
Posted by sally at 11:19 AM
January 20, 2008
Free
And I'm not sure why. Today, though, I've been able to loosen up, let go, and so far begin and complete four art projects. When I haven't done anything artistic or creative (except for take a couple of photographs) in weeks. And after I was done with the drawing and the painting and the writing, I changed the sheets and sorted the laundry.
Maybe it's because I'm feeling better. I have some energy, so I'm not just lying on the couch like a lump. Maybe it's because I got some work done for school so I don't feel like a loser who needs to be doing other things instead. Maybe it's because I promised myself one day to play on this 3-day weekend and didn't make it contingent on getting the grading done. Maybe it's because I bought new art supplies (a set of glitter watercolor paints and some brush-tip markers for less than $5 out of the sale bins at Office Despot) and just had to play with them.
I don't know what it is, but I've ben able to experiment today like I haven't in a long time. I've been able to mess around with oil pastels and construction paper and find out what happens if I put a watercolor wash over marker & colored pencil. I've been able to write a lot with my new pen. And none of it has felt forced or restricted or stupid when I've fucked it up. I've just been able to play, and it's been good.
In fact, the plan was to do a single drawing which I've been thinking about for some time. And then, when that was done, I felt compelled to do another. Which was okay, given that I'm supposed to be doing a series on a given topic anyway. And as I was writing about the fact that I both wanted to and did do a second piece, I knew how I wanted to approach pieces three and four. So when I was done writing, I did them. It never happens for me like that, and I am thrilled that it has. I wish I could figure out the magic formula so I could trigger it again when I wanted to.
Posted by sally at 02:07 PM
January 19, 2008
PhotoHunt: Important
Not only does the subject of this picture have a deep personal importance to me (he's my precious nephew, after all), but as an educator, I have to say that one of the most important things I can think of is the way we choose to teach our children. So he's a metaphor as well. (Let's hope the pressure doesn't get to him.)
Posted by sally at 10:00 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 18, 2008
Too Much
It's been almost a week since I posted here. Why? Let me just give you the highlights:
1) HIDEOUS cold. How hideous? Coughing up a lung--splat!--hideous. On Saturday of last week I finally gave in and went to the local doc-in-the-box to get some anti-biotics. My reasoning on this?
a) The situation had not improved lung-wise in the previous eight days. I was still coughing and retching and it was just nasty.
b) I have a tendency for bronchitis to turn into pneumonia and the prolonged nastiness indicated that was about to happen. I was being proactive in catching it fairly early.
c) I didn't want to have to run to the emergency room in the middle of the night to get it dealt with.
d) I had a fever. Which rose while I was sitting in the waiting room.
I did not get antibiotics.
Why? Not sure. Apparently I am not the most responsible of human beings, someone who obviously runs to the doctor for antibiotics at the first sign of a sniffle and so cannot be trusted to actually know what I need to be healthy. Grrrrrrrrr. I really, really don't want to have to try to fit another doctor visit into my schedule. Because:
2) Follow-up mammogram.
On January 2, as a way to welcome in the New Year and as the responsible grown-up thing to do, I had my baseline mammogram done. Look after your own health, I say. (And maybe learn to stand up for yourself better around doctors.) The following week, I received a printout with the results. And a hand-written note, "Sally, the doctor has requested follow-up imagery of your left breast. Please call us to schedule an appointment."
Does that sound a teeny bit like "OHMYGOD YOU MAY HAVE CANCER" to anybody else, or just me?
Here's the deal. I knew it wasn't. I'm in good health, I eat (fairly) well, when I'm not coughing up my lungs (splat!) I try to be physically active, and I'm pretty sure I'd notice a difference in the way I feel if there was an issue. I'm pretty body aware. It' an occupational hazard. Plus, there is no history of cancer in my family. Well, not NO history. There are two cases of skin cancer in the last three generations. One being my grandfather who worked for the Arizona Highway Department in the era before sunscreen. Regardless, we're a pretty cancer-free bunch.
Still, I worried. Because, you know, what if I was in denial? What if there really was something wrong and I was just ignoring it or too stupid to realize it was an issue? Plus, everyone kept saying, "No history of cancer doesn't mean anything." Really? I think there must be a connection somewhere. I mean, there are families out there who are just rotten with it for no apparent reason. Shouldn't both sides of it be studied? Like the common cold? Don't just pay attention to the people who always get sick (me), take a good, hard look at the people who never do (Dave). Because the information you need may be on that side of the equation.
So anyway, I had a follow-up mammogram (and ultrasound, yay!) on Monday.
And I am FINE. Apparently, one of the original shots created a gland palimpsest on the image, and they just wanted to be sure it was that and not anything "of concern." Which I appreciate.
By the way, for those women who have not yet had their baseline mammograms done, a follow-up is pretty common apparently. They want to check out ANYTHING that's not symmetrical to be sure they shouldn't worry. Someone should tell us that when we get the damn exam in the first place.
3) School.
Oh sweet Jesus. School. We are at the end of Week Two of the semester already, and I have been trying to plan, grade, create/update major assignment descriptions and teach while dealing with the ghastly cold. Also to "evaluate" a set of freshman writing assignments from last fall for goals assessment blahblahblah. Which means that I come home from campus and collapse on the couch and stare at things.
Though I have started reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf. It's amazing what a difference time and educating your palate as a reader can do to comprehension and appreciation. Because I read A Room of One's Own and Mrs. Dalloway as an undergrad twenty years ago, and I never realized the woman had a sense of humor. She does. Some of the comments she sneaks in about readers and writers and "literary people" are hilarious. Very sly stuff.
But if I hadn't been thinking about teaching Orlando next fall (based on seeing the movie several years ago), I wouldn't have picked up the book (or put it on my Kindle). Because I remembered her writing as being uplifting but humorless and really, really dense. You have to work a bit to appreciate Ms. Woolf. I'm so glad I did dive into the novel, because it's exactly the kind of thing my brain was looking for. Beauty, humor, and a good story with some meat to it.
By the way, if you're looking for a fun, quick read, and you're a bit of an Anglophile (who, me?) I highly, HIGHLY recommend The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (yes, The History Boys author, that Alan Bennett). Queen Elizabeth II is the heroine of the novella, and it's the story of her development as a reader. Pure silliness, but so much fun.
So that's pretty much what I've been doing instead of writing, working and healing. And stressing about various things. Including the discovery that a person can apparently get all the way through high school and into college without knowing what a thesis statement is. (Though my personal favorite essay was the one where the student had a very clear thesis and used two examples to support it, one of which was actually a direct refutation of their argument. That's why we proof our work, people. And why we don't get so attached to a thesis that we can't re-work it. If half of your evidence says you're wrong, you may want to reconsider whatever it is you're trying to prove.)
And now I need to get my butt off the couch. I have a lecture on the Male Gaze to deliver today. Sigh. They're all going to hate me and assume that I hate men, when I'm just explaing a theory that I have a hard time swallowing entirely. It's a little simplistic, in my view, and doesn't take complexity of the human thought process into account. But it will give them something to argue about.
Posted by sally at 08:43 AM
January 12, 2008
PhotoHunt: Skinny
Hello everybody! I just happened to stumble across the PhotoHunt for the first time, and since it is a Saturday, I thought I'd jump right on in and join the search.
I've been looking for ways to fire up my personal artistic engine, and this may be the ticket. It holds me accountable (always a helpful motivator for me) and it gives me an easy way to explore other photographers. It also requires me to pick up the camera again, and I really haven't given myself many opportunities to play over the last year or so, so it's nice to be able to indulge myself creatively. Especially if it's one photo once a week. I think I can manage that.
This week's theme is "Skinny." I could have used a shot of Dave, but I decided to stick with my current push to document our recent trip to London. There's a lot of noise in this photo (digital cameras and darkness don't work well together), but I got the colors right, and that's the part that took my breath away the day I snapped this pic. It may not seem skinny at first, but compared to the building it's attached to, it's Jack Sprat.
(Can you tell the semester has started and I have grading to do?)
Posted by sally at 09:56 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 09, 2008
It's a Statue (Yeah, Statue)*
As suspected, prep for today's glorious dawning re: spring semester has taken over my life. I'm still trying to get the London postings done, but, man, so much to dooooo. However, to kind of keep things simmering, here's a shot of Rodin's Burghers of Calais (pronounced in true English fasion "Burgers of Callay"). It's right outside Parliament. Another thing I wanted to see again while I was over there, but wasn't sure I'd get a chance to. Until, you know, I practically ran into it.
Don't you just love Rodin?
*Anybody who knows the source of that line deserves a major award for their incredible knowledge of pop culture.
Posted by sally at 08:20 AM
January 08, 2008
I Thought This Might Happen
School gets started and all my energy leaves me. I had two meetings yesterday, and spent the time outside those meetings finishing up syllabi and special project descriptions, so I didn't post. But I still have so much more to say about London, and I need to say it before the freshness wears off my memories.
I have a 3.5 hour conference today, and another meeting, and lots of errands to run. HOPEfully, I won't be so wiped by the time I'm done that I'll just lie around on the couch like I did last night. But we'll see.
Posted by sally at 07:12 AM
January 06, 2008
Old
The best picture I took on the trip.
A closeup of the original London wall.
There's something pretty incredible about coming into contact with those who came before you. I'm not just talking about your own ancestors, I mean all those people who have walked the same streets you walk, who have left their mark on the world in some way. I suppose that's one reason I love museums. And old books. Sometimes, even the sight of worn-down steps in a well-used building get to me. Knowing there were people living their lives long before I was even thought of gives me a sense of connection somehow. Even if we have nothing in common, even if they lived a long time ago in conditions I could never imagine.
I remember when I was in England in 1988, my then-boyfriend and I took a trip to York and Scarborough on a bank holiday weekend. Shortly after we got to York, we took a walk along the wall, and I remember marveling at the idea that the solid, manmade structure upon which I was standing was 500 years older than the country I came from. Some of those same kinds of thoughts may have been floating around David's head on Boxing Day, when I took him to see exposed bits of the original London wall.
This would be the unauthorized photo of Dave.
That thing on the other side of the street is the Tower of London. Or part of it, anyway.
I was so happy to be able to share that with him. For those of you visiting (or living in) London, this piece of wall is right outside (RIGHT outside) the Tower Hill tube station. It's around 1600 years old. And you can touch it. Which is really one of the coolest things ever. I don't know why I get such a thrill out of touching history, but being able to lay my hands on something gives me a connection to it I can't get just from looking.
Which is why, when we went to the British Museum the next day, I was so disappointed to discover that the Rosetta Stone was encased in glass. Because the last time I was there, it wasn't . Fortunately, there's a copy you can touch in the Enlightenment Room. And I had my hands all over it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Before we left for London, I spent some time figuring out the things I desperately needed to do while I was there, so that we could be sure to do them before doing our normal holiday thing (sleeping lots and wandering around aimlessly) ate up all the necessary time. I also knew that some of these things would involve opening and closing times (and knowing what was closed on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day--answer: everything), and I wanted to take that into consideration too.
When I got around to looking up the British Museum, my eyeballs almost popped out of my head. Because this was their special exhibition.
The Terracotta Soldiers. Oh. My. God. I have wanted to see those ever since I first read about them, but traveling to China just hasn't been in the cards thus far. And they don't get out of China very often. I knew that exhibition was one of the things I was going to have to see. But tickets were sold out before we left the U.S. Fortunately, the museum was also releasing 500 additional tickets each day, so we figured we had a shot at getting in.
We got up early on the 27th and headed to the British Museum. By the time we got there--about 15 minutes before the museum opened and tickets went on sale--there was already a line out the gate, all the way down the block and around the corner. Dave and I estimated we were very, very near the 500th place in line. And since it was a timed entry situation and we had tickets to The Country Wife that evening, we knew we might not get in. Especially if the only available tickets were at 7pm. We decided to take a shot anyway, after all, if they did sell out, we could always go back the next day.
We waited in line behind a scholarly sort of British man and a woman from, I'm guessing, South Africa. She spoke English like it was her first language, but with a fairly strong dialect. They were both very friendly (she was very funny), and though we didn't ever see him again, we kept running into her in the various rooms. After we'd been waiting for about an hour--we'd made it into the building and were standing in the newly remodeled Great Court--which is GORGEOUS--a woman from the museum came walking down the line, obviously counting, and said to the group of people just behind us, "We only have about 200 tickets left, there may not be any for you by the time you get to the front of the line. It's up to you whether you stay or go." And then she continued down the line, making that announcement every so often.
We opted to stay and wait, and half an hour later, had tickets for a 12:40 entry in our hot little hands. That gave us time to explore the museum a bit more, and to grab a quick (expensive and not very tasty) lunch in the cafe before going in. "So," said Dave, "What should we see first?" Of course, I knew immediately. There were just two items on my list of things in the British Museum that Dave needed to see, I felt, and so I checked the map and we were off. To find the Rosetta Stone.
I still remember the moment in March of 1988 when I realized that the interesting black rock full of carvings that I had been gazing at was the Rosetta Stone. It was like meeting Christopher Columbus face-to-face. When I was 10 years old, and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "An archaeologist." I don't even know where I learned that word, but that's what I wanted to do. And I read as much archaeological history as I could get my little hands on. Until I got a little bit older and decided that what I wanted to be when I grew up was married.
So I knew what the Rosetta Stone was. Can you imagine what it was like, then, to be in the same room as the thing that made reading hieroglyphs possible? Amazing. Based on his response to it, seeing the Rosetta Stone live and in person (if now shut up inside a glass box) had a similar effect on Dave. He looked at it for quite some time. Despite the crowd of other people who were looking at it.
It's a pretty extraordinary thing, to be in the same space as that kind of history.
And then we went in search of the Elgin Marbles, now called the Parthenon Marbles. Because that's what they came from.
I am going to take a moment (because at this point it's my main style choice for this blog, moments) and say that I have serious issues with the fact that those pieces are in a museum in London and not in Greece, at the Parthenon, where they belong. I am not alone in this. I am so not alone in this that the British Museum now provides a little pamphlet explaining their stance on the Marbles. But then again, much of the museum's collection of Egyptian, Greek and Assyrian artifacts are there based on the astonishing hubris and sense of entitlement possessed by the Victorian men who basically just hauled the stuff that interested them back home. Assuming that the locals couldn't be trusted to take care of it properly. Really, in the end, that's what it boils down to. All that said, don't hate me for taking advantage of the fact that the marbles are still in London. The are pretty incredible.
Dave thought so too. All of the stuff I wrote above . And then we checked our watches and realized we had just enough time to poke through the Enlightenment Room a bit and get some lunch.
The Enlightenment Room is brain-filling and mind-numbing. The Victorians collected everything. Honestly. If there was a way to categorize something, they collected it. And that's what the Enlightenment Room is all about. Collections. I don't even remember what-all we looked at in there because there was just so much of it. It's a pretty room, though. Dave and I decided we'd like one just like it for our library. Roughly that same size.
After lunch, we finally entered the First Emperor Exhibition.
I wish I had more to say about it. It was really cool. I learned a lot (none of which I can remember at the moment). I spent a long, long time just gazing at the soldiers. But you know what I remember most about the exhibit? How much my feet hurt.
My hiking boots, which kept my feet plenty comfy, had given me tendinitis because of the way they pressed against my achilles tendon. So I wore my Steve Madden boots. Not so much designed for the lots of walking and standing in line kind of activities. I swear to God they have absolutely no padding. I think the only thing between my precious delicate princess feet and the ground was the heel and the leather sole. Which means that by the time we'd walked to the Tube stop and from the Tube stop and stood in line and stood in line and wandered through the British museum, which isn't small, and all through the first part of the exhibit, all I wanted to do was to sit down and take a load off my poor abused feet. Even now, when I think about the exhibit, the soles of my feet remember the pain of that day.
So I don't have any pure and unsullied memories of the glory of the terracotta soldiers. In some ways, it was kind of anti-climactic. I mean, the Victorians had brought over an entire building (not the Parthenon, a different building), and this exhibit was less than thirty soldiers (and some other cool stuff), but there weren't that many of the figures. I think it's a scale thing. I was expecting to be awed by the soldiers because there are 7,000 of them, but I need to go to China to get that particular effect. So while it was pretty amazing to see it all, and to learn so much about the First Emperor, who did some fairly incredible things, all of that is filtered through the fog of my aching feet. (Afterwards, we had to sit in the Starbucks across the street from the museum for about 45 minutes for me to rest them enough to do some more walking.)
Also coloring my recollections of the day was the fact that post-museum, we saw a newspaper sandwich board which read "Bhutto Assasinated." The world doesn't stop turning just because you're on holiday.
We limped home (well, I limped), to order room service and put my feet up before the show, to which we took a cab. (Your holiday doesn't have to stop just because the world is turning.) And just like every other time we walked down the Albert Embankment, we saw this on the way:
Lambeth Palace, Home to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
I wonder what it would be like to live in a building that old and to touch history every day...
Posted by sally at 01:18 PM
January 05, 2008
One of Two
I was just rereading the last entry and realized I was talking about scuplture and had a perfect example and just didn't show it. My bad. This is one of the only two pictures I have of Dave in London. This is the only one I had permission to take. I had to sneak the other. Which you will see later
My Sexy Husband and a Trafalar Lion
I am struggling with a horrible cold, so this is all the entry you're going to get today. Here's hoping I'll be more coherent and alert tomorrow.
Posted by sally at 10:49 PM
January 04, 2008
Art, Artists and the People Who Love Them (Tate Britain)
I have loved the work of British painter JMW Turner since the first day I laid eyes on one of his paintings, in the Clore Gallery of what was then just the Tate. This trip, I got to go back and revel in his stuff all over again in that same gallery in what is now known as the Tate Britain. Though Turner's work hangs all the time in the Tate, they currently have this marvelous exhibition of his watercolors, curated by David Hockney.
I spent hours in that gallery, soaking up the Turners. When I walked into a room of his later and unfinished works, it was like meeting old friends. I had a different response to them twenty years ago, I liked them, but wasn't sure I should, since his stuff became less substantial, more abstract as he developed as a painter. This time, it was pure love and joy for me in that room. Despite my aching feet (my latest pair of hiking boots weren't as good as I thought they were and I had killer tendinitis by about day six of the trip), I could have stood in there for hours. I do so love his paintings.
And this time around, thanks to the Hockney exhibit, I got to discover how much I enjoyed Turner's watercolors as well. I hadn't realized that he began as a watercolor painter, and that he was self-taught, and rather late at that, to work in oils. It explains so much about his approach. And about why he developed the way he did as a painter. I think I spent two hours in the Clore Gallery alone.
After which, David and I split up so that I could go through the (not-free) Millais Exhibit which he was about as not interested in seeing as a person can be. He was good enough to do the Turner stuff more or less with me, and he discovered a new artist he likes, John Piper, so I can't really complain. I mean, we have known for years that except under extraordinary circumstances, I take two to three times longer to go through a museum or gallery than Dave does. Plus, I expect he needed some alone time. He didn't get much of that this trip, and my visit to the Tate Britain was an excellent opportunity for him.
The Tate Britain, taken from in front of our hotel.
So he left, and I paid my money and got a set of headphones with which to listen to various bits of information about Pre-Raphaelite founder and youngest ever painter to be accepted into the Royal Academy school, John Everet Millais.
I had seen some of his stuff before, I love the Pre-Raphaelites, but I wasn't prepared for the impact some of his paintings had on me. Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter’s Shop) was even more vivid and powerful than I remember, and Mariana also made me stop breathing for a minute, though I didn't recall seeing that painting before. I'm half tempted to buy a print of it. There's something so gorgeous about the way she's stretching.
And then I wandered around to the other side of the room and saw Ophelia.
Now I had seen this painting before. I remember it from the last time I was in London. I thought it was really pretty then, though I had more of a thing for Dante Gabriel Rossetti's stuff. But this time... this time... I don't know what it was about seeing her this time... I snapped out of my trance who knows how many minutes later. I completely lost myself in that painting. That's never happened to me before, I've always been apart from the work. But something about it this time sucked me right in.
I spent two hours in the first two rooms of the seven room exhibit. Half an hour in the third room and about thirty minutes in the other four. Because unlike Turner, who I think became more compelling as an artist, Millais' later works strike me as insipid. I slowed down a bit for the landscapes, because there were some really beautiful works there, but his fancy pictures and portraits? Not so much. I'm sorry, but the fact that one of his paintings became a soap advertisement may mean that it's one of his most recognizable. It certainly doesn't make it one of his best, in my opinion.
Then I wandered through looking for the Hogarths and the Pre-Raphaelites before leaving, since I'd spent six hours in that building and needed to meet Dave for dinner. I'm sorry, but I'm a sucker for an artist who is willing to do a self-portrait with his dog that emphasizes their similiarities. I've always loved Hogarth. I suspect he had a wicked sense of humor.
I was a little worried, because I was going to have to walk through the room of Joshua Reynolds. Talk about insipid. Ugh. His paintings have left me cold since the day I saw my first. (Come to think of it, that's what Millais' fancy pictures remind me of.) But on the way through that gallery, I saw a piece I liked. I was surprised, but I'm willing to admit my tastes have changed over twenty years, and so I stopped to take a look, to figure out what it was that caught my fancy. I don't even recall the name of the painting. All I remember is the huge sense of relief that I felt when I realized that it wasn't Reynolds, but a contemporary (I can't recall his name either). I'm so glad my detestation of Sir Joshua Reynolds' paintings can continue unabated.
Which reminds me. Another English painter I've never, ever liked is John Constable. I realize that part of my issue is that he was pre-photography and was striving for photo-realism. But his stuff is just to fussy for me, and now that cameras are here, I think they do the job much better. So let him pass on into the twilight, thank you. But then I saw one of his watercolors. (I couldn't find the one I was after online, so this will have to do. It tells the story, anyway)
For those of you who don't know about painting, let me explain the crucial difference--I think--between oils and watercolors. Oils stay malleable. They can be worked, they take a little more time to dry, and they're more or less opaque. Watercolors? Not so much. You're pretty much stuck with what you put on paper, you can't cover it up and fix a mistake in a watercolor. In other words, you can't fuss. And now that I've seen what the man could do when he wasn't allowed to get all finicky with his painting, I have to say, I love the energy and life and movement in his watercolors. There's so much freedom in his watercolors and sketches. I still can't stand his work in oils.
You know, this was going to cover two other museums and a couple of shows. Obviously, those are going to need separate entries. This has gone on for far too long.
One final thing, before I go do some other stuff. The thing that prompted the title to this entry: The Tate Britain, Tate Modern and British Museums are all free. They have some of the most amazing works of art in the Western World, and you don't have to pay a penny to get in, unless you're going to a special exhibit. And London is full of works of art outside of these three wonderful places as well, sculptures and monuments and--I could go on forever. It was so wonderful to be in a city where people with money and political power think art is an important part of public life. So that we can see this stuff all around us, so it can settle into and influence our lives. Because it does anyway, so why not make it about beauty and intellect and emotional impact rather than just advertising?
View Larger Map
Despite what the map says, C is the Tate Britain, D is the Tate Modern.
There is a boat, very cleverly called the Tate a Tate--which is what I would have named it myself--that travels between the two. I did not get to ride it. We ran out of time.
Posted by sally at 09:46 AM
A Brief Break
from the madness that is London trip posting to say that my Kindle arrived yesterday. I poked around looking for stuff to download and for a brief moment lamented to Dave, "80K titles and none of them are the books I want to read." All of my non-fiction stuff for my classes in available, but none of my fiction writiers are. The day Kindle becomes the tool of my dreams is when the people who have rights to the out-of-print stuff see the possibilities and start publishing that. As it is, when looking for authors on the Amazon site, I found a whole bunch of new (to me) authors who aren't available via the Kindle. So I've got some new books coming my way as well.
I think it's just because my idea of good fiction isn't the same as many people's. I like authors like Barbara Pym and Margaret Drabble and Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Sayers. (At least three of those four authors are dead, so they're not producing much new work anymore, though it looks like Pym may have some stuff getting re-released--yay!) I also like Gaiman and Pratchett, but I've read all of their stuff that's out (except Making Money, we're starting that tonight), and yes that includes Sandman. I don't much care for thrillers and your standard modern-day romances. Or mysteries. Or gritty city depictions of unhappiness and pain. Though having someone's insides ripped out by a man with teeth where his eyes should be is just fine with me. Go figure.
I like stories where characters are fully developed and intelligent, where the plots are relatively believable and yet full of unexpected details that still ring true. I like magical realism and stories where not much happens and some urban fiction, so if anybody has suggestions? (I just realized that all six of the authors I listed are British. And that the next several who I would name are also British--Beverly Nichols, Elizabeth Buchan--Apparently I don't much like American prose. Though I do like Jennifer Weiner and Elinor Lipman and Sheri Tepper. So there you are.)
Today, I'm going to give the new gadget a run for its money, though. I'm beginning Three Cups of Tea, which is required reading for one of my classes, and this means I will be using the quotation and highlighting and dogearing and notetaking functions as well as the just reading bit. We'll see how it goes. I may not be able to stand not having an actual pen in my hands for the scribbling in the margins.
Posted by sally at 07:19 AM | Comments (4)
January 03, 2008
Going Back in Time, My Own History of England
There are not photographs for this entry. Sorry. This is a trip down memory lane. Those pictures are in a scrapbook in storage, and not even for you people will I drive to Pullman before six in the morning to dig them out (I'm still adjusting to the time change.)
As I believe I've metioned here before, I spent a semester in London as an exchange student my junior year of college. It was life-changing. I arrived at Heathrow in January, 1988, a tired, scared, rather lost American girl. I left in June a young woman in love with the city and herself, someone who had a better idea of her possibilities. It was in London that I began to discover the joys of being lost and of finding your own way out. During my time there I learned to take care of myself in a more practical sense than I ever had before. I made my own decisions about where I was traveling and with whom, I took responsibility for my time and my education. I finally started to grow up there.
I also picked up enough of the London dialect and speech patterns that not only did I amuse my parents for three-four days when I got back to the states as I settled back into 'Murrican, but while I was a resident, people I met in other British cities thought I was from London. They would ask me what part of the city I grew up in.
So a big chunk of this trip for me was about going back, about rediscovering the places that affected and influenced me. And showing them to Dave.
Wow has the city changed.
On Sunday, I dragged Dave out to Golders Green, the burb where I lived. As an exchange student, I had shared a room that took up half the third floor of a neat row house about 3/4 of a mile from Brent Cross Station. My host father was a professor of geology at the University of London. He was slightly deaf, absent minded, and had hair that stuck out all over his head in the manner of Einstein. My host mother was German. Boy, could that woman cook.
Their house was fourth in a long row of houses. Though it wasn't an issue in our room, sometimes you could hear people on either side of you going up and down the stairs. But it was a nice neighborhood. The houses were all cared for, the gardens were tidy. It was a nice place.
It isn't really so much that way now. That neighborhood has not weathered the last 20 years very well. The houses are slumping into decay, the gardens are messy and littered, there are battered cars along the streets. I never had an issue walking home late at night from the tube stop there. Now? No way in hell would I risk it. Parts of the walk between station and house look like junkie heaven. I was glad I was there with Dave.
Given how expensive real estate is in London, I'm rather surprised the neighborhood has gone downhill in the way it seems to have done. It really looks beat up. The difference between past and present made me want to cry. I had to keep reassuring Dave that it was indeed a much safer place when I was living there.
One of the really funny things about the journey out to the house was that I found the it without a map. We walked out of the station and I knew I needed to turn right. We headed down a dirty street for three blocks and I said, "Turn left here." We did, and came upon the end of the street I lived on, the only place we could have accessed it from that end. And yet, I didn't recognize a thing except the underpass wall where the street went under the train tracks and the house once we got to it. And the shops once we came back to the station.
The place I recognized most on the entire trip? The platforms at the Golders Green and Brent Cross tube stations. They're both above ground, so it's not like just walking into any station. The Brent Cross platform was one of the most familar locations of the entire trip. Apparently I was paying more attention there than I did anywhere else in the city.
Because when we went looking for the building where my classes were held, I had the whole thing exactly backwards.
One of the things that consistently surprised me this trip was how weirdly I had remembered distances. The street I lived on seemed much longer than I remembered it being, and the various sites that we visited were so much closer together than they ever seemed to be at the time I was living in London. The entire city felt much smaller in general than I recalled. And journeys I remember as being blocks and blocks of very confusing twists and turns were actually very direct 2-3 block walks.
We spent part of Boxing Day wandering around Bloomsbury, which is very near where I went to school. And since we were there already, I asked Dave if we could try to find the place. Here's what I remembered: I remembered that we were near-ish Russell Square Station (which I never managed to find on my own except by lucky accident when I was a student) and that there had been a park to the northwest of the building. A park lined with very old grave stones. And that it was near the University of London School of Pharmacy because they'd rented the space to us.
I had been trying to find the location on a map ever since my A-Z came in the mail, with no luck. None of the street names looked right. That's quite possibly because in the mid-90's, several blocks were demolished and re-built, with brand new street layouts. We figured that out when we wandered around the neighborhood for a while.
Anyway, we walked along Bernard Street and what should we come across but a very distinctive RED building labelled Russel Square Station. I have no idea how I could have missed it when I lived there. And then, directly across the street, Brunswick Centre, a big cement shopping centre which I recognized immediately because I often bought lunch in a store there. We walked around it and right across the street was the School of Pharmacy. And around the corner from that...
A park, to the southeast of a familiar looking building. But it couldn't have been that park, because it was on the wrong end of the building.
We wandered around that neighborhood for twenty minutes at least. Dave was very patient with me. Far more patient than any person should have to be. I had finally decided that I was either in the wrong place or that the building had been torn down in the 90's, when we walked into that park. And again, I was overwhelmed with a sense of "I know this place!" It was the right park. The familiar building on the wrong side of the park is, I am convinced, the place I went to school. Everything looked right (except for their locations in relation to each other), I'm sure we were in the right spot.
I just can't understand how it was so big and confusing when I lived there and so simple now.
Or how I never realized my classes were literally within walking distance of the British Museum.
But then, I spent more time riding trains than I did walking when I lived in London. I had the map of the underground memorized, and would orient myself based on which station things were nearest. I guess that to cope with so much that was so new, I desperately needed one familiar thing. For me as a student and a baby adult, that became the London Underground. This trip was wonderful for bringing together for me all of the disparate parts of London and showing me how close they really all are. It's no longer a huge, unwieldy mass of separate places in my head. Thanks to Dave, the city of London is now a complete entity for me.
And so, in his honor, I give you Camden, Bloomsbury, bits of the West End and The British Museum with Starbucks.
Posted by sally at 05:15 AM
January 02, 2008
City of Bridges
Lambeth Pier, just downstream from the Lambeth Bridge.
One of the things we passed almost every day.
Dave once wrote a poem for me about how we came together in a city of bridges. That was when we lived in Portland. It's one of the things we both miss, living here. We're so landlocked. Not a river in sight. So imagine our joy, being able to step out of the hotel and cross the street and walk along the Albert Embankment. Going out in the morning or coming home at night, we always walked along the Thames. And to get to most of the places we wanted to go (including the most useful Tube stop), we had to cross the river as well.
Albert Embankment, just south of the Westminster Bridge.
(The green bridge you see there.)
While we were in London we crossed the following bridges on foot:
Westminster Bridge
Lambeth Bridge
Vauxhall Bridge
The Millenium Footbridge
Tower Bridge
Dave also crossed the Waterloo Bridge one day when I was making my promised all-day visit to the Tate Britain.
Because we frequently used the Westminster Tube Station, and because it was the nearest bridge to the nearest Starbucks (for Dave's sake we visited almost every morning), the Westminster Bridge was the bridge we used the most, with the Lambeth Bridge coming in a close second (it was nearer to our hotel).
Westminster Bridge
Taken from the Lambeth Bridge, looking downstream.
That big ferris wheel thing is the London Eye. It's HUGE. You can see it from all over town where tall buildings aren't in the way. Each of the cars holds 35 people. Dave really wanted to ride it. I really didn't. I don't much like heights, and ferris wheels tend to make me feel ooogy. But I would have ridden it for him. It just never made it to the top of our things to do list. Anyway, the London Eye is now as iconic as Big Ben (which is also in that picture, just across the river) when describing the city.
Lambeth Bridge
Taken from the Westminster Bridge, shooting upstream.
The Albert Embankment is to the left side of the river in this photo. You can see our hotel, though I'm not going to go through the bother of pointing out on the photo which it is. It's one of the brown buildings on the other side of the Lambeth Bridge. Some of the windows are lit up with orange neon.
The one issue we had with using the Westminter Bridge was the crowds. Even on Christmas Day, there were people shoulder to shoulder on the very wide sidewalk (downstream side) taking pictures of each other with either Big Ben or the London Eye in the background. And it doesn't matter what time of day or night you cross. There are hoards of people. It was insane. Until we realized that nobody was using the upstream side of the bridge and that there was a subway to the tube station* from that side. From then on, we used the upstream side.
Though the hot, sugared nut vendors only parked their kit on the downstream side of the bridge, since that's where the tourists were. So sometimes we had to walk that way anyway. If you are ever in London in the wintertime and you don't have a nut or peanut allergy, I highly recomment the sugared nuts. They're served HOT, and goddamn are they tasty. It's like eating warm CrackerJacks.
One of the many things I love about London is the diversity. When squeezing our way through the masses on the Westminster Bridge, we would hear the following languages spoken, all in the span of 100 yards: Japanese, French, Russian, some Middle Eastern language, (I am not even going to try to guess which one), Portugese, Spanish, Italian, some Asian languages (again, no idea which ones) and a variety of English and American dialects. It's so wonderful. All of these people from all over the world who have come to this city because they love it too. We're all so different, and yet all so human. It makes me cry, the beauty of that, and it's another reason it's so hard to live here in this small, white, western town. At least we get some diversity via the University.
View Larger Map
The parts of the Thames we frequented.
Just to give you a taste of where we were, the Lambeth Bridge is just off the section shown on the map. The lowest bridge on the map is the Westminster Bridge.
The river flows from the bottom of the page up and off the right side of the page.
Oddly, I didn't take upstream and downstream shots from all of the bridges. And we never walked the Millenium Footbridge on the days I had my camera. Which is too bad, because from the West End it leads right to the Tate Modern, which is a sight to see in itself. Also, there was a graffiti park I'd wanted to photograph, but never got to on the camera-toting days.
Dave also bewailed the fact that he didn't have an audio recorder with him for one of our passes across the Millenium Footbridge. The first time, we walked down to it from The Strand. The second time, we were walking along the Victoria Embankment and came at it from underneath. Which is where we made another one of those joyous discoveries. From underneath, the foot traffic passing over the metal frame of the footbridge makes an exotic, percussive music. (Which was apparently more of a problem than a benefit when the bridge was first built.) We stood underneath for a while, enjoying the sounds and looking at a monument there, before heading up onto the bridge ourselves to join in the music.
The Thames, for all its strong, fast current, is a relatively flat river. It's affected by the tides. So sometimes, the water was very, very high, and sometimes it was so low you could see beach off the Embankment. In fact one of thos magical and unexpected moments of our trip happened our second night in London. We had just had dinner at this lovely pizza place in--I think--Lambeth, and were wandering along the Embankment when we saw a group of people clustered at a corner and looking down onto the river. There, on an exposed bit of beach, a busker was building a sand sculpture of a family--man, woman and child--by candle light. It was really beautiful to see, he was already done with the three primary figures, each was lit by two votives that were built into the sculpture.
Of course, the bridge everyone thinks of when they think of London and the Thames and Bridges is Tower Bridge, so named because it's near the Tower of London and also because it has, well, towers.
Tower Bridge Tower
We crossed the Tower Bridge on Boxing Day as part of our excursion around to places we hadn't seen yet that we could get to because everything but the stores was closed. (Boxing Day, i.e. the day after Christmas, is, just like here, the day when all the stores have blowout sales. The advertising on Christmas Day TV in Britain is just as annoying as it is here. All about the Boxing Day Sales. But, as I said, nothing else was open.) It's the only bridge from which I have up and downstream photos. Though apparently I haven't actually done anything with the downstream pix. So you'll jsut have to be satisfied with upstream.
Tower Bridge, looking upstream
Our hotel is that direction, around a couple of corners.
The ship sticking out into the water is the HMS Belfast. I don't know what it actually did, but it's the site of one of the Markets in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. It's amazing, by the way, how much my view of the Underground has changed thanks to that book. The names of the Tube stations all have very different meanings for me now.
And if you look to the right side of the picture, to the skinny thing that's the tallest building on that side of the river, bristling with scaffolding, that's the Monument to the Great Fire of London, the one that razed much of the city in 1666 and led to Christopher Wren's work being all over town, since he was the principle architect. It's known as the Monument, and is basically a big column with a golden flame on top, and the Monument's height is supposed to be exactly the distance from its base to where the fire started in Pudding Lane. It's currently undergoing major restoration and will be done in, I think, July.
I didn't even think of the appropriateness of picking London for our tenth wedding anniversary trip until we were walking across one of the bridges on the second or third day there. And then I remembered that beautiful poem Dave wrote for me, the one we included with our wedding invitations.
Bridges
steel and stone stretching across
green
eyes looking across
sand
falling slowly - now.
miles passed easily,
leading up to the structure;
the spanning yards, most precious.
lost years shared with wonder,
lives changing and growing;
new days and hours relished.
time
and
asphalt,
words sent across wires
and
a few steel girders,
a fortunate confluence of circumstance
in a city of bridges.
What luck, then, what marvelous good fortune, to be able to celebrate ten years of marriage to this wonderful man in another city of bridges. Thank you, David, for the gift of this trip.
*Note for those people who were confused by the combination of subway and Tube station. They're not quite the same as the U.S. usage. In England, a subway is a pedestrian underpass, something that crosses under a road to help you get to the other side--by walking--without having to deal with traffic. The Tube is the other name for the London Underground. Which is what in the U.S. would be considered a subway system.
Posted by sally at 08:45 AM
January 01, 2008
A Room with a View (of an Airshaft)
While in London, we stayed here. It bills itself as a 5-star hotel on the Albert Embankment with gorgeous views of the Thames and one of the 50 best restaurants in Europe.
We did not eat at the restaurant (it's not Dave's kind of food).
This was our view.
By day:
By night:
I'm pretty sure the red lights are from the restaurant.
I should say that the room itself was very nice, with a kitchenette of which we took full advantage. There was a turndown service that brought us chocolates every night and the room service was tasty. There were also no screens on the windows, so I took all those images leaning out into the open air. And it was a nice walk from everywhere we wanted to be.
We just couldn't see those places from the room.
Posted by sally at 12:39 PM
Secret Places
One of the things I love about London is all of the discoveries a person can make there. Not only are there these brilliant blue and green plaques on the walls of various buildings which give you an idea of their historical significance (we found the place where the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed while taking a random stroll through Bloomsbury, thanks to a helpful blue circle), but there are all of these wonderful alleyways and passages and nooks and crannies to peep through. Just wandering through the West End you come across marvelous sights, even without trying.
(This is actually on the grounds of the Kings College of London School of Medicine in Lambeth. I shot it from the Albert Embankment, after noticing it on our first walk. It was obviously part of an interior prior to the Blitz. I have no idea who the fellow is, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. So many secrets make themselves known to you if you just keep your eyes open in London.)
Part of this has to do with the age of the city. So much has occurred in London over the years, and by over the years, I mean over the last couple of millennia. Things have been happening on that section of the Thames for at least the last 2000 years, so there's all kinds of stuff to be discovered. As I said to Dave one day while we were walking, I think I could spend the rest of my life in that city and not learn all of her secrets.
(These were both taken on Boxing Day, during our walk through the City.)
I didn't carry my camera with me most of the time we were there because we walked a lot and it's big and bulky and I didn't really want to have to worry about it. I thought about taking my point and shoot too, though I decided against it due to the seeming silliness of carrying two cameras with me. I really should have included it. It's not so artsy fartsy as the big camera, but I've taken some great shots on it, and it would have fit beautifully in a coat pocket. This is all my long and involved way of saying that I only took my camera two of the nine days we were there, and so have limited photographs. Though I did snag Dave's camera for one of those other days, to get some pix of a place I loved when I lived there and found again this trip.
There were four things I remembered from my time in London in 1988 that I wanted to see again this time, if I could. Three places and one piece of art that I had been enchanted by while I was there, that stuck in my memory and fed my dreams. They were the things that popped into my head every time I thought of London in the last 20 years.
I found them all again this trip. Three of them, I wandered across completely by accident, and if we'd turned and looked in a different direction during a specific moment on our Boxing Day walk, I would have also stumbled upon the fourth. As it was, I had to search it out. How lovely a gift is it, when the things that touched you--small miracles all of them--come back to you by happenstance during your one opportunity to see them again?
I have pictures of two of those miracles. For the others, I'll try to find images on the net for you. Because my taking photos of either one would not have been appropriate.
Neal's Yard
A friend of mine gave me the book London Walks before I left for my semester abroad in 1988. One of those walks included a teeny nook near Covent Garden called Neal's Yard. It is so small that you can't find it on most of the handheld maps, you have to search for it in the A-Z, a book-sized map of London. You enter through a covered passageway which opens into this lovely little courtyard. It was a fairytale place, and I only managed to get there once. I really wanted to go again this trip, but I wasn't going to carry the A-Z around with me either. (Question: How do you wander around in London and not look like a tourist? Answer: Don't carry a huge fucking bag full of maps and cameras.)
On Christmas Day, we went out for a walk and I took the 35mm camera with me, figuring there would be fewer people out and I could get the shots I wanted to then. We wandered through the West End, among other places, and when I saw a sign for Seven Dials, I insisted we go that way because I'd always wanted to know exactly what it was. I am an idiot for not taking a picture of it, but there you are. It's a seven-sided sundial in the middle of a traffic circle, fed by seven one-lane, one-way streets, with small, colorful shops on each rather pointy corner.
We tried to figure out how to tell the time, but it was an overcast day with the kind of light that doesn't allow for any shadows. At random, we turned to wander down one itty-bitty street and I gasped with incredulous joy. Because there on the wall ahead of us was the street sign for Neal's Yard. I dragged Dave along immediately.
It was even more wonderful than I had remembered.
Photograph of St. Paul's During the Blitz
One of the obligatory tours one takes in London is through St. Paul's. When I was there in 1988, I marveled at how little I liked the space within. It was too busy and overworked for my personal taste. (You'll see in a moment what my preference in churches runs to.) There were too many people and too much ornamentation and it was the fifth or sixth thing we'd visited that day and I was overwhelmed by it all, though I tried to appreciate it anyway because you're supposed to. So I was pretty meh about the whole interior of the cathedral, though I was trying to see why everyone else loved it so much, when I came around a corner and saw this picture (the one with the smoke). It stopped me dead in my tracks.
On our next to last day in London this time around, I was wandering through the Tate Britain, trying to find the Pre-Raphaelites and Hogarth. I'd already spent four hours looking at Turner and Millais, so I was a bit dazed and dazzled, and I read the map wrong. I entered a gallery of black and white photographs and realized I was lost. So I looked at the map again, figured out where I meant to be headed instead and turned around to leave. I stopped dead in my tracks again. Because there on the wall, right next to the doorway I'd just come through, was that photograph. I'd been wanting desperately to see it again, but not interested enough to drag Dave into St. Paul's just to see a picture. This is what I mean by little miracles.
Chapel of St. John's, Tower of London
One of the earliest tours my student group did during our tenure in London was the Tower. We saw the Crown Jewels, we went into the torture chamber, we did the whole thing. Including the White Tower. Which is where our guide led us into one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I've ever been, the Chapel of St. John's. We didn't spend as much time in there as I would have liked, I could hang out in that room forever, as it turns out, and soon our guide was ushering us off into the next space. But I've dreamed about that room since, wondering if it could really have been as beautiful as I remembered.
On Saturday, our last day in London, we visited the Tower. We were doing the Armories self-tour, where you are forced through the building in a specific path (especially on days as busy as Saturday was) and suddenly, we came out of a stairwell into the Chapel of St. John's.
It was every bit as beautiful and peaceful as I remembered it being. And it continued to be for at least five minutes before some entitled asshole jumped the velvet ropes to snag some photographs he just had to have. The reason I don't have any pictures of the chapel? It's a church. There are signs at the entry saying, more or less, "This is a sacred space. Gentlemen, please remove your hats. Please refrain from speaking." Then a glob of tourists poured through the door and started chatting in their outside voices "What is this, then? It's a chapel. No, you can't take pictures in here. But he's taking pictures." etc. And the peace was shattered and we left. Which is too bad, because it's so lovely. I would like to go back some day when I can spend an hour or so in the room. Alone.
St. Dunstan's-in-the-East
One of the first things the faculty of ILACA (the program I studied with) inflicted upon us while I was a student in London was a day-long walk through the city. It was to help us adjust to the time zone and to introduce the city quickly. Basically, they exhausted us and overwhelmed us with information so that we'd sleep better that night and maybe deal with the jet lag and time change more quickly. (It didn't work for me, I spent the first two weeks of my stay there waking up at 2am for no particular reason. The same thing happened this trip, though only for three days.)
We started at the Tower Hill tube station and I still don't remember where we were when they finally let us go home. I do know that it was a long walk and that the Monument was a part of it. And St. Dunstan's-in-the-East. Though I was tired enough even at that point to not catch the name of the church. Which was a pity, because I only saw it the once and had intended to visit it again, though I couldn't remember where in the city it was. Obviously, I didn't get back to it again while I lived over there.
But I really wanted to see it on this trip.
I'm not sure how or why I knew this, but I knew it was a church near the Monument. And so, while we were walking in that area on Boxing Day, I tried to find it again. (I also spent a lot of time looking at the churches noted on that section of the A-Z. Two names kept popping out at me, St. Dunstan's and St. Magnus the Martyr. I figured that St. Dunstan's had stuck with me because one of the later stops on that wearying day was to St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, which I had hated with the passion of a culture-shocked 20 year-old college student who has not been sleeping well and has walked too far and seen too many churches and other places in a one-day time span. Twenty years later, I still remembered the name of that church.
I didn't find the church I was looking for on Boxing Day. Which is highly ironic. Because if Dave and I had turned around and looked in the opposite direction while gazing up at a large pseudo-gothic business building on Great Tower Street (The London Underwriting Centre, as it turns out), we'd have seen it. It was a block away.
Another church, however, caught our eyes that afternoon. It intrigued us both enough that Dave wrote the name down because he wanted to know more about it. St. Magnus the Martyr. He looked it up a couple of days later when he opened his wallet and saw the name. I looked at the website after he was done, and found a list of links to other churches in the City. (I swear there's another one every two blocks. It's pretty incredible.) St. Dunstan's-in-the-East was on it, so I thought I'd go ahead and check, and lo and behold, it was the place I was looking for.
Built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Fire, St. Dunstan's had a tower that also withstood a serious gale that leveled several other churches and the Blitz. The rest of the church didn't make out so well, though after the bombing the walls were still standing. When the Anglican Church reorganized after WWII, they opted to not rebuild St. Dunstan's-in-the-East. So the City of London turned it into a park. It opened in 1971, and I visited it in 1988.
I remember how peaceful it was when we walked in on that first mad tour, and I'd vowed to make it back somehow. This trip, on my very last day in London, I did.
I was not carrying my camera, so I borrowed Dave's point and shoot to take these.
The interior:
The exterior:
A nine day trip. Four fuzzy memories of places and images that stopped my heart and sparked my imagination twenty years before. How miraculous is it that I discovered all four again, almost completely by accident? This is how magical our trip to London was.
Posted by sally at 11:30 AM
London Travelogue
The next several entries are going to be about the trip to London. They are not going to be chronological or linear in any way. They're grouped around a set of subjects that work for me. Some of them will have pictures. All of them will be long.
Consider yourselves warned.
Posted by sally at 10:56 AM
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