[ friday, march 15 ]
the canal between camden lock and regent's park was sludgy, drippy, held inside a trough of damp, moss-green stones and occasional black metal railings. the rain had let up a little and the sky was lightening, but it was still gloomy and threatening in the shadows cast by walls and overhead bridges, so we walked quickly. algae and oil swirled together on the surface of the water, just a few inches below the edge of the walkway, and rain-wet willows on the opposite bank trailed the leafy tips of their branches in the dark brackish current.and then, color: narrowboats lining the sides of the canal, moored to the rocks, red and green and blue and yellow, some covered in tarps and tightly shuttered, others with their doors and windows open and wispy white smoke rising from their little tin chimneys. and through the cloudy glass windows I could see tiny stoves buried beneath stacks of dirty frying pans and teakettles, skinny beds whose neatly spread blankets reached all the way to the floor, stripey stuffed tigers sitting on a woven rug, battered guitars and bric-a-brac, dishes in sinks and in cupboards. and I thought, people live here! like pirates, or nomads, never in the same place for more than fourteen days, inside floating houses just a few feet wide. and then I thought, I want to be a pirate too.
my life hasn't been boring by any means; it hasn't even been especially ordinary. when I think about it, though, it seems that all the extraordinary bits have been circumstantial, that it's just some sort of cosmic accident that I have interesting stories to tell and I've never done anything particularly exciting of my own accord. and I want to, I want to do something unusual and unordinary and brilliant, or at least brazen; I want to be a pirate and a runaway and a vagabond. but there's so much to do, and I still want to live in a city and have a career and take care of children in spite of myself, so how will I ever find the time, let alone the courage? and then, sometimes, I worry: perhaps I've already had my adventure, only I forgot to write about it.
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[ wednesday, march 13 ]
there were so many bicycles in cambridge! they were stacked up against fences, packed into parking lots, leaning against buildings, even dropped haphazardly on the sidewalk. and, of course, they were in the streets. there were white-haired women in slippers riding bicycles with woven baskets attached to the handlebars, little girls in pigtails riding bicycles with training wheels, university students with buttondown shirts and shiny helmets on lightframe yellow bicycles with clicking gearshifts, tourists with maps and sunglasses and swinging cameras on rented bicycles with fenders and springy seats. I, of course, was smitten.
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[ tuesday, march 12 ]
from the thames-spanning middle of the newly reopened millennium bridge, london stretches out in four directions, a clash of victorian architecture and industrial complexes and sleek modernism. and all along both horizons the skyline is swarming with construction cranes, more than fifty of them, poking up above the buildings and sectioning the cloudgrey sky into a series of acute angles between white and red and black lines. they look simultaneously ancient, towering over the dirt-streaked dome of st. paul's cathedral like a herd of dinosaurs craning their necks to find the nearest waterhole, and futuristic, jutting metal arms pressing hard against the heavens like power and progress. so out of place, impositions on history and on design, and yet so integral, as if the entire city would crumble in their absence. I wanted to take a picture, but couldn't capture it all inside my viewfinder... I should have known it wouldn't fit.[ 18:03 • + ]
[ monday, march 11 ]
in the center of trafalgar square at dusk, pigeons piled themselves up in layers along my arms and shoulders and head, pressing their cool pink claws into my bare forearms, scrabbling for a spot and getting tangled in the hood of my sweatshirt, perching on each others' backs and tails and wings, pecking at the muesli cupped in each of my palms as if it were the only food they had seen all week; if not for the half-dozen tourists cringing gingerly under the swarm of flapping wings, the birds' performance might have fooled me. they were soft and silky, cooing in the backs of their throats, ruffling their feathers in defense against the wind and brushing the skin on my arms and cheeks with the kind of delicate warmth that belongs only to small animals. I had the sudden urge to turn my head and kiss them, lips to beak, the way I do with my pet lovebird, but then I remembered that pigeons are rats with wings, so I kept my lips to myself and simply smiled, reveling in the moment -- it's spring break and I am in london! -- before I lifted my arms and sent them all scattering to the sky.you know, I think I might have even kissed a rat, given the chance.
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[ sunday, march 10 ]
how am I still so frenetically busy even two days after my last class? and how is it that I can spend twelve hours mentally preparing to pack even though it'll only take me thirty minutes to put everything in my bag? why don't I ever put my passport away in the right place? and when was the last time I slept like a normal person?I went to london by myself when I was ten. I stayed awake for the entire plane ride between jfk and heathrow, bent over my calvin and hobbes book (attack of the deranged mutant killer monster snow goons), politely refusing the weird sandwiches all the flight attendants kept offering me. but this time, I'm flying from philly to gatwick, and I'm twenty years old, and I plan to sleep.