If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.

This melancholy London- I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air. - William Butler Yeats

Ooolalalala. It has been far, far too long since I have updated this petit cahier, n’est ce pas? Allow me to begin by assuring you that it’s not for lack of wanting to, not at all. That being said, I’ll try to bring you up to date on my adventures. Setting? I’m at my computer, at my rolltop desk in my room in Toulouse. The door to my balcony is open to the balmy evening. I’m drinking coke *light* flavored with orange and listening to James Taylor.

One thing that this traveler, at least, has felt in force is the realization that there’s nothing quite like becoming the stranger in the strange land to make one conscious of being an American. Not in the “ooo, I’m sure all these Europeans hate me; I oughta paste on a quick maple leaf and start saying ‘Eh?’” sort of way. More like, in the midst of other histories, other traditions, other languages, other everyday objects, there surfaces an acute familiarity with the weight of known history, tradition, language, popular culture and so on through which one habitually and oh-so-unconsciously moves. Made poignant by its absence. Make no mistake - I’m not speaking of culture shock or homesickness. What I’m saying is that a person tends to live in a kind of shorthand, wherein the metaphorical “sentences” of life may be left incomplete. Well. I find myself having trouble filling in the gaps, of late. Which is what I mean when I say that I’m conscious of being an American. In a way it’s comforting, liberating, even, to understand how much that’s mine.

Continuing in this vein: After I left San Francisco, I made a brief pilgrimage to Philadelphia and New York before I decamped. The intensity with which I appreciated both places surprised even me. I’ve been to Independence Hall; seen the oldest Quaker meetinghouse in the US; visited the spot where my hero, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration of Independence. I spent a quiet moment in the cemetery and threw a penny onto Benjamin Franklin’s grave. I stood in the line for security at the Liberty Bell with a group of ravishing Italian tourists whose trailing scarves, fantastic shoes, and animated hand-waving laugh-punctuated chatter made me wish I spoke Italian and could join in the joke. Lorca also said that "New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines." But going to New York was, for me, like coming home. Something in the crush of people, cars, concrete, sound, mess, harmonious cacophony, something hanging in the space between all those things … satisfied my soul like nothing else. I know that some of you, at least, know what I mean.

So, then. London. I got on a plane from the British Airways pod at JFK – arriving absurdly early in anticipation of the crazy long lines. Made it through security in about … eight minutes, and although I had to remove not only my compact but also my pens (evidently Aveda powder and biro ink are potential security threats) to my checked bag, I was in fact issued a BA Ziploc in which to store them. Quite kind, really. And the BA terminal has wireless and good food and decent coffee and a place to buy a pencil, so the three hours I spent there weren’t a total wash. I arrived at Heathrow around 9 local time, heaved my pack onto my plane-crushed vertebrae, got my first Great Britain passport stamp (managing not to look too absurdly pleased in front of the charming guy with the charming accent), and headed through the sign at customs that says Nothing To Declare. Hrm.

The Finnish friends with whom I was visiting whisked me off to the loveliest B&B I’d ever seen, situated with British self-effacement on a quiet street in the trendy London borough of Kensington and Chelsea. I had a bed big enough for an entire Ukranian family, a desk, a tv that folded into its own cunning little closet (the drawback there being that it only got British channels, which involves three versions of BBC news, two sport stations that are almost exclusively dedicated to football, a weird soap opera network, and a lot of channels that were “experiencing difficulties in transmission” for the entire duration of my stay – well, I suppose I can relate to that sentiment), a shower the size of my entire bathroom in Colorado, and my own billowy cotton robe and plushy hotel slippers. Every morning they brought me breakfast on a tray and my own personal pot of tea or coffee and a copy of the Independent; every day at 4 they delivered another pot of tea with jam and scones. Absurd, right? My favorite thing, next to sprawling on the bed and trying to feel the pea, was to sit on the ledge of the window in my foyer (yes, I had a foyer) with my teacup and saucer, looking out over the rooftops of London for Mary Poppins. Everything else was so storybook that it seemed inevitable that she’d come floating out of the clouds with her parrot-handled umbrella and scold me. Spit-spot!

What did I see in London? Whew. Everything imaginable. Just look at the pictures on flickr and you’ll see … well, everything I saw. I haven’t got that totally updated yet, but it’s current through part of London. The internet is so slow here that it takes forever to upload photos. Particularly if you’re trying to upload like, 400 photos at once. (No, I’m not kidding.) So I’m working on it, and will do my level best. One of the highlights was a trip to the Sherlock Holmes museum, nestled (cleverly, surprisingly) at 221-B Baker St. It’s a recreation of the rooms of the famous detective as per the description given either by the patient Robin to his Batman, Dr. Watson, or by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, depending on the level of one’s suspension of disbelief. Again, refer to the photos. But there’s a man who wanders around with a pipe and a cravat and says “Hello. I am Sherlock Holmes, and this is my apartment” in just as wooden a manner as I have described. Evidently they retrieved him from some dank corner of Madame Tussaud’s, and I wondered what he’d do if you put a quarter in. (Also where you’d put the quarter.) There were actual wax figures on one of the floors though, which was tres bizarre. You walk up a narrow flight of stairs and into a low-ceilinged room to see a sort of mini-jail cell and a man inside with sorrowful visage and handlebar mustache, a cabinet with someone’s ears in it under glass, and someone else frozen in the act of hanging himself from the rafters. Rather distressing, and I don’t know how much it added to the experience. But I kept wishing that my dad was there and hearing his voice in my ears, which is why, if you look at flickr, you’ll see about forty pictures of the place. There you go, Dad. Next time I’ll take you in person.

Now I’m listening to a random Portuguese jazzish cabaret lounge-singer type woman. Talk about cultural crisis, eh?

After London we spent a day in Oxford – also refer to flickr, but I can tell you that when I saw the Bodleian Library, I think I had a tiny orgasm.