England

London? I don't know. Crowded, cold, exciting. I tried to write a poem about it, about the business faces and the brit rockers. I'm think I'm ready to leave so there might be a slightly whiny slice:

[i]London is starving Starbucks breakfasts,
Ties tied too short, black bags, pointy shoes,
Rushing damp tunnels, no kids, no dogs,
No God, only a plastic number for a muse.

London is late morning showerless black coffee
(No longer tea), only skinny jeans and cigarettes,
Cellphone assets, tiny white headsets,
5 o'clock bedtimes, tensomething potentiality.

London is a fat wrinkled elm tree
Ringed with kings, short haired queens,
Ruffled neck writers...so many old things and--
Bombs:
But forgotten fragments are reassembled unknowingly.

London is life packed in ice cold concrete:
Eyes that know every ocean, every dirt color,
Ears that hear faraway gunshots, legs that ran.
We're safe here, under man's own promised land.

London was my beginning and is now the end
Of coach-bus blab, John Smith, and Pretend.

Sorry that you actually read that, nay, all of this blog. But I tried to give something back, maybe even my eyes will slip across this later and remember. I hope to see the 3 or four of you that sacrificed precious moments of LCD screen dreams, studying, sleeping, maybe even the coveted times of absolute nothingness to read my bramble. Whatever. Peace. Cheers. I'll try to write next from Australia.

A week of rain and plays. But incredible plays. I saw Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Ceasar, and Romeo and Juliet.

I understand now why the Wife of Bath had to make her own 'fun and adventure.' There's not much to do here. Bath has been described as the old Hollywood of England. It's packed with boutiques, overpriced feed-you-almost-nothing restaurants, velvet clubs, slightly withered queen-like powdered women and parks that charge you to lay on the grass. The culmination of all excitement is the fabulous Jane Austen Center. Yey. It makes sense. I like to think that Bath is a sort of "objective correlative" as to how I feel about Jane Austen: gaudy, decorative, lofty, impressive but disengaging ("objective correlative" is a jazz-word our prof taught us, it means when your sad you write that it's raining outside). The two most famous Georgian strips are here: The Royal Crescent and the Royal Circus. They are beautiful and undoubtedly English. I keep wanting to say in a thick accent with my face mostly stiff, "George Banks!" and then swing the black steal gate open with my umbrella handle. But without my imagination, Bath is my least favorite city. I can't like 'em all, right?, or I no one would believe anything I write.

There was a night though, when I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else: Barcelona v. Arsenal for the Champions League Final at St. Christopher's Inn. The pub was packed and we all huddled, sweat, and clenched our fists as we watched Arsenal slowly decay, 2 to 1. Every near goal the voices would rise together, eyes widen, and then cease at once to allow for the cussing and cursing at a bad call or missed shot by the two loud, drunk Henry worshippers in the back. I understand a little better now what English football is, what English life is.

The charge me my life here for time ont he information super highway. See you on the 2nd in Sea-town, and 6th in the MN.

Cheers.

Writing from Jaffa Net Cafe, a pale yellow slit in the "pick-your-own-raw meat" ethnic food strip. My eyes are tearing up from the sweet apple and cherry Huka smoke, my dark-skinned, bald, middle eastern brothers stare blankly past me, probably at my now gray, once white computer monitor held together by sticky tack. There's a shiny silver sword hanging above my head.)

Cambridge: you're about 3 maybe 4 nestled in a onezie with booties, wrapped in your infant blanky, lying in a stroller with the the little flap blocking the direct sunlight, there's a breeze, you smell grilled chicken and freshly mowed grass, your mom softly whispers to you pointing out the colorful shiny things, you might doze off, you might eat a snack: peace: Cambridge. Mokshada Anil Patil, "Mona," got bored with the beauty here. In India she is used to filthy streets, hot humid air, sweat, dust, and broken glass. She could not believe that every tree was made for a picture, every street swept, every flower in bloom. "There is no ugliness, it's too perfect," she said,"I need a frame of reference."

Yoshi said he asked God to bring him here after he dies, to the "Garden of Eden" as he keeps calling it. He asked if that pink tree in the courtyard of St. Johns was the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. I told him about Mona after a break from Fear and Trembling and A Handful of Dust. He was pissed: "There's no frame of reference in Heaven."

I am a college student and I guess I look like one because I can walk right through the guarded gates of King's College and into the Faculty of Classics building, Room 102, for a philosophy course on Aristotle. I was expecting a lecture hall of at least a hundred, but ended up an odd face out in a class of under 30. Drew, Yoshi, and I did the whole half-laugh thing at the English jokes we didn't understand and prayed that we wouldn't be called on. We weren't. We left scott-free with some damn good notes on Form and Matter.

Well, no one in the group was right, I have yet to meet my wife in Cambridge. I flirted with a Swedish bar tender a little, but she just kind of flightely smiled and nodded at whatever I said. I only know one swedish word, so I took my beer back to the Spade's table. Joe and I lost for the first time.

I'll leave you with some Wordsworth to chew on:

[i]Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things
We murder to dissect.

Everyone should listen to Josh Rouse. (Thanks sister.)

Next to Bath...

Cheers.

The Gateway to Trinity College:

from my Journal April 21:

I'm losing track of the days. I forgot what I did yesterday or if the day before yesterday is today. It is a blessing, though, to have the days blend a little, for Time to let loose and not be so strict and pressing. In the Lake District, time goes slow if you want to linger a little longer at a pub or it moves right by you in an instant if you want it to be bed-time. I made mine early last night, about 10:30, so waking up at 6:30 to catch the fog over a glassy Derwent Water was welcomed. On my way out, I could only finish a half cup of my bitter, instant coffee until I couldn't feel my mouth anymore, kind of like the after-cigar cotton mouth. I smoked last night, bumming a puff or two from Mark's Havana and Robin's old-man pipe stuffed with "The Best Blend" tobacco. We sat around and french inhaled and then, when the smoke stopped, proceeded to session the picnic table with our intense freestyle walking antics. A few heads poked out of the hostel's self-serve kitchen to clap and gawk ar our stunts. Among them, Dr. Reinsma smiled with his usual child-like adoration and curiosity. He soon found his way outside to have a closer look. I asked him if he wanted to join us. He said "well, it's quite late," looking down the drive to the water as if internally calculating how far we could get along the lake trail before it got too dark. Anticipating his thoughts, I said kinda laughing, "no, right here, we don't go anywhere." Mark launched up to the table top with a styly but akward 180 to heel stall makeyourbodystiffasaboardthing. Dr. Reinsma got excited. I think his mustache wiggled. I told him to give it a shot and I slowly demonstrated a "beginner's grab" on the lower bench seat. Cautiously and focused he approached the bench, stepped up with his right leg, bent his left knee, and raising his foot up to his reaching right hand, stuck the grab like a natural. After the word spread, Yoshi couldn't believe it: our white shaggy-haired mustachio professor in a crane-like poise on a picnic table. He wished I would have taken a picture, but this deserved even more praise and attention, "I'll write it down in my journal."