Liquid Courage

It had been a long day and an even longer night. I hadn't heard about the important work function until that morning, so I had rushed home after work to get ready. It was a formal event, that required classy dresses and high heels. I was so flustered that I never even ate dinner. Every important and monied person in London was there-- even the Minister of Defense and Princess Anne. And me. I stood around awkwardly, clutching my glass of wine. Two men noticed my discomfort and came over to introduce themselves. As we talked, servers continually filled my wine glass.

One of the men asked if I was engaged. I said no, embarrassed because I thought he was hitting on me. But he said that this was the place to find a rich husband. He introduced me Alex and Rupert, two members of the Horse Guard, the branch of the British military that protected the royal family.

They invited me to go to a club with them and some of their friends. I thought they meant one of London's famous clubs, like Ministry of Sound. Instead they took me to a private, members-only club that cost thousands of pounds a year to join. When I got there, Rupert handed me another drink, and another, and another.

The mix of wine and vodka and lack of food was getting to me. I was looser and more vibrant than I had been all night. I knew how out of place I was with all of these rich, high-society Londoners. But with the liquid courage in my veins, I was charming them all. At the end of the night, I hopped on the tube back to Tottenham Court Road.

As I stumbled drunkenly down the street back to my flat, a man approached me. He asked if he could take a picture of my new, sky blue high heels. He explained that he had a foot fetish, and he really liked my shoes. I told vehemently told him that if he came any closer, I would rip his balls off. I'm usually not very intimidating, but thanks to the alcohol, I had "perfected being fearless" -http://theriverislife.blogspot.com/.

Independence Day

It's the fourth of July, but no one cares. The sky is grey and it's raining and there will be no fireworks or barbeques or Bud Light. I'm sitting in my office, and I have no plans to celebrate later. My coworkers ask if I have plans, almost judgmentally, to celebrate my country's independence. More than two hundred years later and there still seems to be some bitterness behind it. Celebrating freedom from England is something they can't comprehend. Why wouldn't you want to be British? Why would you want to speak that "type of English" called American? The condescending way they see Independence Day is strange. Even the American expats don't seem to want to celebrate. "A small get together with some friends," they say when I ask if they're doing anything. Or "Not really. I live here, don't I?" I think back on the last two summers in Tallahassee. The fourth is usually brutally hot, but it's perfect for swimming. Followed by burgers and beer and watching my friends nearly light themselves on fire with fireworks they bought in Georgia. The city is no place for fireworks and it's way too cold for swimming. I pull on my jacket to go home.

"The fight for freedom is over. The next fight will have to wait ‘til morning. Freedom will have to wait until next time."

http://noles1128.blogspot.com/

God Save the Queen

Wonder

"You always remember your first time.

The first time you achieve a dream.
The first time you find a place that truly inspires you."
-http://spaceistoimagination.blogspot.com/

 

In London, there is inspiration on every corner. The people, the sights, the tourists, the history. I could walk the streets of London for years and not grow tired of it. The old structures mixed with new buildings. The people, wearing black, or grey, or navy, or tan, or white, or neon. Speaking English, French, German, Chinese, Spanish. A million languages I've never heard. Like André in Nadja, I could "unconsciously [watch] their faces, their clothes, their way of walking" (Breton 64). They are both fascinating and meaningless to me.

I walk from Tottenham Court Road station down Charing Cross, past Leicester Square, all the way down to Trafalgar Square. Sometimes I turn right and walk through the Mall, into St. James' if the weather is nice. It rarely is. 

More often I move down Whitehall past the Horse Guards Palace toward Westminster. I stand beneath the cathedral for a few minutes before I am standing outside of Parliament, under Big Ben. It's not called Big Ben anymore, but that changes nothing, really. I walk east along the River Thames towards Embankment, and cross at the Waterloo Bridge. I walk west on the South Bank, where the theatre is, and past the pub made from old sets, and through the gaggles of pickpockets, and under the Eye until I am directly across from Parliament.

At first, I have to think just about where I am going, how to get there, how to get home. Soon it is my usual haunt. When I leave the flat, I find my feet walking this path without my telling them to. I can walk there without thinking, except that the whole time I am thinking. Contemplating the history of it, the future of it, the present reaof it.

Get Lost in a Whim

"From my personal experience, it is not until one is truly lost that the value in sense of place is noticed."  -noles2014   http://noles2014.blogspot.com/

This is true. Getting lost forces a person to notice where he is. Not only in wild, in the wilderness of the great outdoors, in the majestic peaks of the Sierra Nevadas. But in the wild cities, too. The streets of London are a confusing web of dead ends, winding curves and changing names.

You can wander for hours, try retracing your steps, but to no avail. You're hopelessly lost. There are street signs, sure. But they are hard to locate. Anyway, they mean nothing when your sense of direction is so thrown off in this strange new place.

So you wander these gray streets, with their gray buildings. You don't know where you are going. That's when you see the color-- the independent coffee house, the graffiti in the alleyway, the hidden terrace in between two restaurants. You hear the color, too. The different accents. Or the different languages.

You find the city when you let yourself get lost in her ancient streets. She comes alive when you stop searching and succumb to her whims. She has so much to teach, so much to offer, but she will only show you if you give up your preconceived notions.

"...travelers must accept that they do not have ultimate control- upon this realization, a sense of self and an appreciation of place can soon be achieved."

Gray Jungle

There's concrete as far as the eye can see. All you can see is gray. The buildings are gray; the sky is gray; the people are gray.

It's been gray for months. Years, probably. Maybe even centuries. The people have become desensitized to the gray. It no longer bothers them. They don't even remember color.

They move about their daily lives as if in a daze. They never stop. One million people, two million people, three, four, five million people. All moving mindlessly through an endless amount of gray. 

They pass each other but never see each other. Everyone is nothing more than a dark gray blur. Their eyes are gray. Their souls are masked. The people are all of one color, one size, one mind. What do they care of their fellow man?

The concrete jungle is a man eat man world. Survival of the grayest. Anyone who arrives who is not gray quickly fades. Only a matter of months before he becomes gray, too.