So the last few days I have been in London after going to Egypt- which I think Ankit covered pretty well in his blog cept a few things:

The pyramids were so big, you couldn't look at them without losing your knees a little bit, and looking up from the base it really just looks like a mountain of rocks. And also, I did make a mental note that they were the product of slave labor- but at the same time I wondered who the person who put the very last block at the top... can you imagine what that must have felt like?

I loved the egyptian food- even the pigeon!

sheesha who knew? one night we were all sitting in a room in Cairo when a guy confessed that he used to work at Prince in Georgetown... so basically the world is inhaling or something.

I miss the heat... It's been pretty nice here in London but I miss the sun.

and I have 15,000 words to write by April 27.. so that's a little worrisome... especially since I'm leaving for amsterdam in the morning. where I'm meeting my mom. and my aunt. c'est super.

I've been reading a lot of poetry, like more than usual, because for one of my essays I have to analyze the effect of Pindar, who wrote songs for the athletes of Greece a few hundred years before the birth of Christ... on Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats, who lived in the nineteenth century- but on the bright side I get to read a lot of Keats, who I have a huge crush on now, "tender is the night" and also on poets.org there is a recording of Stanley Plumly reading To Autumn by JK and I heard Plumly in person once, he has an incredible deep resounding voice, like in another life he was a Presbyterian minister or something, but it's amazing.

Anyway, I'll be home in about a month and a few days. I've been in London for four months. I've been living in cities for three years. I'm not sure I like it anymore.

Anyhow I tried to make a little video of the stuff that was cool in Paris, there are some pictures and videos of the crepes, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and inside the Louvre are the statues of Psyche and Cupid kissing, Michelangelo's Dying Slave.... most importantly... Winged Victory, Nike of Samothrace... annnd stuff like that all while listening to J'ai Bu by Paul Azvanazor

I have been remiss

oh well.

Today I had the wonderful experience of seeing Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. I was not really looking forward to this, I have never been to the ballet before and I did not really see what the big deal was- but I get it now! From the first scene opening with this very rich, colorful set and all these characters acting their own parts through body language and dance- it was really amazing.  I went with my friend, and on the other side of me when the man sat down, he put his hand on my thigh! He looked down when I started, and his face went white, to the degree I think that mine was red, and then he said, "Why I'm so sorry, I thought you were an armrest!" I just smiled and him and his date and said something like, " no worries" while my friend cracked up.

But the ballet- well it was beautiful, there was always about five different places I wented to focus my attention on the stage- except when the lead ballerina was on, she just stole the show completely, it was so breathtaking to watch her even just move her wrist, every motion was so graceful... and I especially loved when all her swan maidens were on the stage, it was an eyeful of white tulle and did I mention that the music was wonderful too? Haha I closed my eyes at one point to just listen... ok so my point is I am a convert.

Afterward walking around, it was like being in the presence of so much grace and ease lingered in the audience, I have never been so aware of myself, it's strange.

P.S. Spring is here, and I like it. Here's to spring.

Horace, Odes, Bk 4, no 7

Snow's gone away; green grass comes back to the meadows,

and green leaves

Back to the trees, as the earth

Suffers her springtime change. Now last month's torrents,

diminished,

Keept to their channels. The Grace

dares to unrobe and, the Nymphs and her two sweet sisters

attending,

Venture a dance in the woods.

Yet be warned: each year gone round, each day snatching

hour says

'Limit your hopes: you must die'

Frost gives way to the warm west winds, soon summer shall 

trample

Spring and be trodden in turn

Under the march of exuberant, fruit-spilling autumn, then

back comes

Winter to numb us again,

Moons make speed to repair their heavenly losses, but not so

We, who, when once we have gone

Downwards to join rich Tullus and Ancus and father Aeneas,

Crumble to shadow and dust.

Who knows whether the all-high gods intend an addition

Made to the sum of today?

Give to your own dear self: that gift is the only possession

Fingers of heirs cannot grasp.

Once you are dead, Torquatus, and Minos delivers his august

Verdict upon your affairs,

No blue blood, no good deeds done, no eloquent pleading

Ever shall conjure you back,

Great is the power of Diana and chaste was Hippolytus, yet

still

Prisoned in darkness he lies.

Passionate Theseus was, yet could not shatter the chains

Death

forged for his Pirithous.

London Theatre

I am taking a course called Modern Theatre, it's really great and this week we went to see Mrs. Affleck at the National Theatre, which has three stages, and ours was the smallest room, The Cottesloe. Mrs. Affleck is an adaptation of an Ibsen play called Little Eyolf, which was taken from Norway 1890's and put into England 1950's. The play was about a dissatisfied woman who wants her husband to in some way commit to her and her alone, but the problematic relationship they have with their son gets in the way. The son then dies, and the play takes an odd turn, but the actress playing Mrs. Affleck was wonderful, she was like Audrey Hepburn with a spine.

on Tuesday I went to see King Lear at the Young Vic Theatre- it was a modernized production, but the original Shakespeare text. Pete Postlethwaite from Romeo + Juliet annnd Jurassic Park. He spent the last two acts in a sundress holding a pink parasol, looking down at himself as he said, "I have been greatly abused." The end was very moving though.

I have also gone to the Old Vic to see Committed with Richard Dreyfuss, which was not great. The set up was cool- the stage floor was made into tens of tv screens, and the moral of the play was interesting, although sort of ambivalent in the end, but the actors were not really all that convincing, I never forgot I was watching a play.

Tomorrow I'm going to see the Taming of the Shrew at the Novello Theatre- it's the Royal Shakespeare Company, so I'm excited to see it.

Night, Chelsea

Je t'aime.

ah so last week I went to Paris. So.... this is going to be a long entry.

It was a strange spur of the moment trip- by which I mean I only booked my seat on the Eurostar Rail three weeks before leaving.

I left at 6:30 on Saturday morning, so as to have the whole day. It did not occur to me at the time that this would mean (allowing for the hour + bus ride to St. Pancreas International) that I would have to wake up at 4am. That would have been fine, but my friend Sarah was visiting on Friday and I spent the day walking around Westminster and having high tea at Kensington Palace. That was really fun, actually, cucumber sandwiches and cinnamon tea followed by breaded studded with nuts and raisins and then some sort of cake. We went to see a free jazz show on the South Bank of the Thames, that was fantastic also (Mishka Adams). Anyway, I got back to my dorm at 10:30 ish and still hadn't packed or showered. 

London at 5 am on Saturday morning is an interesting scene. It was mostly quiet except for the people walking and riding to their early morning jobs, or else returning from their very late partying. I made it to the rail without incident, and very much enjoyed the lax security and easy journey into Paris, only about 2 1/2 hours. I walked from the station to the hostel, which was also really a happy surprise, it was about a ten minute walk from Notre Dame and the big blue door opened into a stone courtyard with lots of light and vines on the walls. If you are looking for a place to stay, I'd recommend this place: MIJE Rue de Fourcy.

So I met up with my friend Ashlee and her two friends from Muhlenberg College in PA, they are all doing home stays in Aix en Provence, where Paul Cezanne lived. We stopped at a sandwicherie for lunch (chicken sandwich and chocolate croissant, best ever). Then we walked to the Louvre and through the Tuileries Gardens outside of it on our way to the Champs-Elysees. This was a long long walk that ended with us trying to figure out how to get to the Arc de Triomphe... there were about 8 lanes of traffic and we were seriously considering making a run for it when we noticed the very small sign pointing to steps that led to an underground tunnel to the Arc. It was very cool to see, I loved seeing all the detail that went into the stonework. We walked from there to the Eiffel Tower, then headed towards home. We were exhausted by this time, and so when we saw a metro we were thrilled... until we got on to it and in the crush of people I managed to get pickpocketed. I didn't realize my wallet was missing until we had switched lines, and  deferred my meltdown until the next day, but in my mind I can almost see the hand with grey and brown hair on it reaching into my bag.

This is the second time I've been stolen from in the last four months. 

But Ashlee covered me for the whole weekend, and I got my mother to give her mother a check to deposit in Ashes debit account... it all worked out, but what makes me mad is that both times I had to pay to get a new student ID - $15 at GW and L10 to King's. So unjust. 

Sunday: I have to mention breakfast- it was just at the hostel, a half a loaf of bread with strawberry jam, a small chocolate croissant and a cafe ole and an oj, but something about that petite dejeuner was really beyond incroyable.

 clock in the musee d'orsay

We went to the Musee D'Orsay, which used to be a train station long ago before it became an art museum. There was some really wonderful Van Gogh and Ashlee loved Degas's dancers.

There was also a painting from 1890 called L'origine  du monde, (Origin of the World) and it was a close-up of a women's vagina, by which I mean spread legs. It was very funny, only men were taking pictures of that one, and an English girl whispered in a shocked voice to her companion, "how horrid!"

We got panini's before going to Saint-Chappelle (an overpriced tourist trap church, but there was beautiful stained glass) and Notre Dame (free, and magnificent- but I did feel strangely about walking around while there was a service happening.) We paused for crepes outside of Notre Dame and reflected on how unreal it felt. Then I went and introduced date marry dump to the Muhlenberg girls and we played that with various french and english royalty for a while.

That night we went to a restaurant called Bodega near our hostel. It was so good we went again Monday, they had this walk poulet, chicken with haricot verts and mushrooms and onions, so good with a margarita.

Monday began early, we had breakfast and got to the Louvre by 10, and explored the Egyptian wing first. Then to Greek statues and Italian from there. Michelangelo's Dying Slave was very cool to see, but the highlight for me was Nike of Samothrace, or Winged Victory. I wrote an essay on this statue freshman fall at GW, I've wanted to see it since then- it's just so intense, the wet drapery and the outstretched wings and posture, it's all so breathtaking.  It's headless, which is strange but somehow it just makes the statue more interesting, more scope for imagination.

Of course, we saw the Mona Lisa, and she seemed to watch me everywhere I went, which was fun. It was more impressive live, after seeing so many reproductions though, it was not really possible to be so awing. 

My favorite painting was probably this huge epic masterpiece of Napoleon crowning Josephine- I could have stared at it for another hour, it was - there's no other word- sumptuous.

We also visited Napoleon III's living quarters which have been preserved, they were attached to the Louvre- a lot of red velvet and crystal chandeliers. 

After much walking through the Louvre we went to Angelina's, a place made famous by its rich hot chocolate and guest list (Coco Chanel and Proust were both frequenters). The chocolate chaud was so rich my friend couldn't finish hers, it really did taste like melted chocolate, that thick, and along with it the waiter brought a vase of heavy whipped cream.

Our last visit Monday night was the Eiffel Tower- E12 bought us a ticket to the top on the slow moving elevator, and by the time we got there it was exactly 7, dusk was setting in and the tower was glittering, as it does every hour after dark.

 We stared for an hour at every possible view as it got darker and Paris lit up (City of Lights, after all), then bought some cheap post cards and I purchased a E1 Eiffel Tower key chain from one the many street merchants, one of whom murmured "eh sexy" after realizing I definitely wasn't going to buy something. 

We split a litre of wine with our dinner and stayed up late talking about American and French boys, but without coming to any definite conclusions.

So I wasn't kidding about the length of this thing- but I can't believe it was only three days, still. I left early Tuesday morning so I could get back in time for Jacobean Shakespeare. All day I kept thinking, yesterday at this time I was ___. But it still feels unreal, or maybe everything else seems less real... je ne sais pas, mais Paris est une belle ville.

East Market predators

Today I sent in my application for a double major in English and Creative Writing- I had to send in 15 pages of poetry and someone in the english department will be reading it and assessing it. I don't even really know how competitive it is, but I am aware of at least one other guy I know applying too- and also that he's got an obsession with pro-wrestling.

That's what's so strange about creative writing courses by the way- you walk into a room of strangers, tell them all intimate and sometimes bizarre information about yourself, and then leave. Once a class of us were packed into an elevator and all I could think was, "she's slept with fifteen guys and calls them interchangeable" until it occurred to me that She might be thinking, "that girl hangs out in cemeteries and writes poems from the point of view of her ex boyfriend". You see my point? It's such a show of flying freak flags. 

Anyway I also went to the East Street Market today, where Charlie Chaplin once shopped. While I was looking at a pretty and cheap shirt, a man next me starting whispering and I thought he was talking to himself so I just walked away. Later I was purchasing some nectarines and there he was again, next to me and muttering. Then, the man and wife who owned the stall I was at came out from behind their counter and forcefully ejected the man from the marketplace. Did I mention that all this time I was wearing headphones and listening to Nirvana? They returned and asked if I was alright, and I asked what he was saying. The husband cocked an eyebrow at me and the wife just shook her head and told me I owed her 2 pounds 50 pence and to be careful. The mystery remains, and I think I'm fine with that.

I've been spending a little time with a guy from my english class, who told me he was a lord- it has occurred to me that he's pulling my leg, but I'm afraid to question him for fear it will offend some sort of weird royal sensibility. Anyway he's very dry and sarcastic and calls me droll and tolerable. Mostly I want to use him to understand British politics better, I think he's the equivalent to a poli-sci/ journalism double major at GW. 

My English Lord and I avoided each other today, we are equally phobic, it looks like... but all in all it was a great Valentines Day. I went to explore Notting Hill and maybe hoped to run in to Hugh Grant falling in love with Julia Roberts, but had no such luck. I did wander around Portobello Market for hours, it was so cool: there are about 2,000 vendors on Saturdays and they all have these little tents and make everything, crepes, falafel, hotdogs, and beyond food there were really great clothing tents and a whole section of antiques and jewelry and I purchased a little clay elephants for my collection- the man who I bought if from said his friend the potter made it. 

Then I met up with friends to go see Vicki Cristina Barcelona- which I loved but also thought was missing something in its characterization of american women- haha Woody Allen still doesn't get it... maybe even less than he used to. Anyway, it was very funny, and Javier Barden is crazy hot, suddenly I understand Morgann's obsession.

I think my next stop is Kensington Palace.

Library and Charing Cross Road

So recently in my Modern Theatre class we've been reading Strindberg- the guy credited for beginning naturalism in the theatre- or at least writing the manifesto for it. We were talking today about his Dream play- he was so interested in dreams and what they meant at the same time as Freud, and He also believed that there were symbols, but also that dreaming enabled a spiritual place of transcendent experience- not sure what that means? Me neither.

(This is Maughan Library- it's not Gelman, but it's home. ps it's one of three prime examples of Gothic architecture in London- also on that list is Parliament)

The last dream that I can remember was going back to visit GW, and everything was slightly wrong, but I was still happy to be there... maybe this means that the exact same thing will happen senior year?

Side note: I just found out that I got 2135 F street housing, but I can't find out who my roommates are. It's sooo frustrating.

Ok so today I visited Charing Cross Road,

 and I love it- I walked about ten minutes and passed five book stores int at time- and I got a deal! Bought a Tale of Two Cities and Fathers and Sons for only 8 pounds! Tomorrow (if it's over 40 degrees) I'm going to Notting Hill and Portabella Road Market, then to read Dickens where it is meant to be done- Fleet Street. I know- I should stop my crazy partying.

P.S. Does anyone know where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter? I remember reading that she wrote part of it sitting outside a Starbucks or something in London... I must go there.

Love, Chelsea

Weekend With Dad

This weekend my Dad was visiting London during his layover at Heathrow, on his way to India for birdwatching. (Yes, sometimes I feel like I live in a Wes Anderson film). We met up at the hotel he was staying at and went for a walk along the South Bank to the Tate Modern. Then we ate at this cool restaurant in the Oxo building, before going to see Richard Dreyfuss in Complicit at the Old Vic. The play was a bit much, the lead kept on crying and whining in a high pitched voice, it made it difficult to understand what he was saying.

On Saturday we went to The Tower of London- it was really cool, our tour guide was a Yeoman Guard or a beefeater, and she made all these jokes about beheadings and torture, comparing the coin that was traditionally handed to the executioner to severence pay... she was cute.



It was very strange though, being in a place where so many queens had died... and the Royal Jewels, they were pretty cool- I've never seen so many diamonds, or so much purple velvet.

Sunday we went to the British Museum, also very cool, I wandered through Japan, and took a picture of the ancient japanese bling- netsuke.

Covent Garden... of Eden?

Well it's almost Feb 5- yikes. I don't really believe in conspiracy dreams though, they make me a little jumpy but not obsessive.

Robert Frost on the subject:

Some say the world will end in fire

some say in ice

from what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice

I think I know enough of hate

to say that for destruction ice

is also great, and would suffice.

Today I went to Covent Garden with my friend Lily- she grew up in London and showed me all these really cool shops, like one place where they old sold socks and leggings, and they had all these really cool knit stockings in bright bright colors and there were also these weird lace lingerie thong socks- it was a little kinky!

She also told me that the church in Covent Garden (which was originally an estate belonging to a dude) was built to make the man appear to be religious- but he actually chose the cheapest possible design for the building.

Later on I was reading these poems and one of them was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, it was a poem of praise, and the end of each stanza was the line "He giveth his beloved- sleep" and she was not talking about rest or napping, she was talking about death. To her, the greatest gift the God bestows is the final rest. Most people don't even want to think about death it so disturbs them, she was writing poetry in thankfulness. It's a beautiful poem.

I don't know why this is coming across as such a dark entry, I've had such a good day. Maybe it's just because I haven't witnessed any sunlight in over a week.

wool

-Today in my Shakespeare class we were talking about King Lear:

  King Lear, at the beginning of the play, decides it's time to retire- so he decides to split his kingdom equally among his daughters, but only after each tells him how much they love him. Two of his daughters recite flowery praises, but the third, Cordelia, keeps silent. She claims that she cannot "heave her heart into her mouth"- she can't put into words what she feels.

Lear is pissed, and disowns her- he completely believes that what his other daughters said to him was true, because he trusts speech- he sees no separation between words and action- to say- is to make it so.

His Duke, Gloucester, is in another situation- this man trusts only what can be proved. His illegitimate son Edmund takes advantage of this by presenting him with a false letter. Gloucester believes Edmund because he believes what he sees, not what he hears.

And so the two men are both punished- Lear goes mad and Gloucester is blinded. Gloucester can therefore no longer see to believe, and Lear loses comprehension, and so all his understanding of words shifts, including his understanding of his own identity.

One of the critics I read said that both men are fated to their specific punishment because of their attachment and relationship with language, and that resonates.

Helllo!

   So today It was still very snowy- but the buses were running again, so I could leave my little patch of London and head to class.

But First- I just had a strange experience. I made friends with a girl in my building, and she invited me to accompany her to play pool- but first she wanted to go to the smoking pavilion. I didn't know that there was such a thing- but then I realized she was talking about the little bus stop bench where there were always four or five people standing talking on the phone with cigarettes in their mouths. We were chatting, and suddenly I realized that the girl on the other side of me smells very strongly of marijuana! I then further realize that the two guys standing in tee-shirts a few steps away from me speaking in Russian to each other are in fact smoking from a large glass bong- (which actually had a pot leaf on the side). 

Then a security guard speaking in some language I'm not familiar with begins walking crunchily and slowly across the ice covered lawn leading toward the pavilion. At first I thought he was talking to himself, until I see he has a one of those little speaker phones. The two guys watch him for a second, take one more hit each, dump the rest of the contents into the conveniently placed trash can and walk slowly back to their building. The girl puts out her joint and follows. Then, my friend puts out hers and we walk to the pool table in the opposite building. I asked her what that was all about and she shrugged.

Anyway I thought it was all pretty strange and un-UPD like.

ugh, when did worrying about class schedule for next year start?

I am not going to worry about graduating in a year, I'm not going to whittle my time away thinking about how little their is, I am only going to do what I like to do. And what I have to do. And as often as possible I will make those two be one in the same. 

When I graduated from high school, it drove me crazy to hear my friends say how much they would miss it, and each other... saying it and thinking about it didn't change anything- I guess my real fight is with stating the obvious. More and more I want to adopt the Buddhist rule of stopping before I speak and asking myself three questions: Is it truthful? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Honestly I'm less concerned with 1 and 3... they seem almost irrelevant to me. If something is necessary, than whether it is true or kind can back up, it's got to be said.

But what I hate is chit-chat, and I think this explains both why I hate meeting new people and why I have never gotten over a certain ex. With new people, you have to say certain things that you have said a million times and that mean nothing and change nothing. It is such a waste of time and energy and life force! And with Mr. X, there was always more thoughtful glancing around then trying to attach meaning to something with words that words can never articulate anyway. 

In the novels of Henry James, there is so much focus on eye contact- the most important revelations in most of his stories occur with two people looking at each other and suddenly seeing something, something it might be impossible to explain- just that there is so much more going on between two people just looking into each others eyes than through any other way of communicating. 

I bought pre made pina colada- it's very good, but we have no ice.

Markets

The other day I went around with Stein to meet a friend of his in Camden. First I met him at his building which is an LSE (London School of Economics) dormitory on the South Bank of the Thames, from which you can see St. Pauls Cathedral.

We walked to the underground station and on the way there passed through the Borough Market, which was this really cool open air food and ceramics market. There were people selling all these different kinds of homemade jams, cheese, bread, and like at Trader Joe's there was quite a bit of taste testing available.

We then took the tube to Camden, where there was another open air market. This one was more about hats and tee-shirts that said things like, "Dolphins are gay sharks." I wanted to try to find a shirt with Sid Vicious on it, but the only Sex Pistols shirt was one that I already owned, Never Mind the Bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols. Then we walked around Camden for a bit, it really reminded me of South Street in Philly, there were a lot of goth British kids with chains and heavy eyeliner and mohawks. There was one very normal looking middle aged man with his beard dyed neon pink. Just his beard...

Later, we walked to meet Stein's friend and passed a bunch of skate boarding parks, I guess that is really big here, I see them all over.

So Last Night I had my first ever Fish and Chips! It was delicious- with a screwdriver. I went out with Stein and a bunch of his friends from LSE, about 7 guys, so I felt Right At Home.  4 were from GW, and we really just talked about the mutual friends we had there. Then the talk turned over to the Superbowl, so I peaced out. This semester is looking pretty familiar.

Bonjour!

   So yesterday I went to Trafalgar Square purposefully to get a picture of the George Washington statue there. The "commonwealth" of Virginia sent it to England and with it sent some dirt, to be placed under the statue, in order to honor Washington's vow to "never set foot on English soil" again.  

I also went to Hyde Park where I encountered more ducks, I've become very friendly with...

and also... I think I managed to talk sensibly to a British person in class today. We were reading Ancient lyric and more modern english poetry about the Song of Songs, and it is all very sensual "allegory" about the relationship of God and the church, but this guy in my class kept going off on these little tangents about gendered language and all-consuming love, I don't think I've ever heard a guy under the age of 50 talk about love and sex so earnestly. I don't know if British culture is different than what I'm used to or if this guy is just fated to be a poetry professor. The actual professor, I think has a crush on him, she fixed her eyes on him while he spoke and sucked in her cheeks, it was a bit bizarre, but she is very eccentric and interesting. 

The other American abroad student in that class talks a little strangely, she seems to have adapted a bit of an English accent.

Oh I also am certain at this point that guys are easier to befriend than girls, because, I sent the exact same facebook message with my phone number to a guy and a girl and guess who responded with, "oh cool I'll call you this weekend." guess. anyway I don't know what it is, maybe they both think I'm a lesbian and the girl was uncomfortable with my aggressive advances. Whatever, I'm through.

Shakespeare today

Today we were talking about Othello in my Shakespeare seminar, it was really fun just to listen to all the British accents... I got a little preoccupied with trying to figure out who was from where, but we were talking about race, and my seminar leader is this very enthusiastic post grad student, and she kept saying things like, "isn't it racist to discuss race at all?" and I don't know but it all seemed a little silly to me, especially when the picture on my edition was this homo erectus monkey man. Obviously there is racism inherent in the play, and I was especially uncomfortable because everyone in the room was paler than me, and I'm pretty darn pale even with tan.

Anyway, after that I went for a walk on the Waterloo Bridge and looked around Somerset House's courtyard, it's an art gallery that King's College is trying to purchase to add to their campus.

Tonight I'm going out with some kids, it's Tuesday, but I have no classes tomorrow and drinking culture here is just so amazingly true to the stereotype. Anyhow I'm working on talking to boys in a way that does not make them think that I am proposing a sex tryst in the broom closet. Wish me luck!

Russell Square

Today I went to the British Museum in Russell Square... AFter going to my Jane Austen in Context lecture... who knew that the first novel written from the point of view of a female character By a woman was Evelina, by Frances Burney in 1780, when Austen was 5??? And even that was epistolary, not third person narrative. 

But Russell Square Park was so pretty, it's just a square around a cool flat fountain with like ten spigots that stay low for a while then grow bigger every half hour or so... it was so cute this pigeon fell in love with one of the little spurts and was dancing around it and cuddling with it... then it started to rise higher and the pigeon looked like it was willing to drown to stay with it, I thought it was going to drown but then it flew away.

... The British Museum was really huge and full of all these cool things- the Rosetta Stone and a piece of the Sphinx in Egypt. There was actually a really amazing section of Egyptian artifacts that made me really want to go to Egypt... ahem.

So I got a little bit accepted to Mortar and Pestle, a gw online literary magazine... so here's to validation! If interested...  

http://studentorgs.gwu.edu/mortar/winter2008and2009/poetry/required/

Love, Chelsea

In the novel Persuasion, the last novel written by Jane Austen before she died in 1817, the story of a young woman who suffers for 8 years because she was forced to cancel her engagement is told. Anne Elliot met and wanted to marry Captain Wentworth, but she was convinced not to by her family. At one point, she enters into a conversation with a man whose sister recently died. The sister's fiancee is already engaged to another young woman, which, for obvious reasons, upsets her brother. Anne and Captain Harville debate whether women or men or more loyal and persistent. Anne's final argument is this:

   

"I should deserve utter contempt if I dared suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as - if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex ( it is not an enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone"

(Austen, Persuasion, 157).

I am inclined to agree with her.

Auden

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

that for all they care, I can go to hell.

But on earth, indifference is the least

we have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

with a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be

let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

of stars that do not give a damn

I cannot, now I see them say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die

I'd learn to look at an empty sky,

And feel it's total dark sublime

though that might take me a little time.

W.H. Auden was a British poet in the early 1900's. I adopted this one as a possible motto for a little while, but there's something about it that really seems unfinished. Not the poem itself, maybe, but the idea behind it. 

really bad red wine

and visited Hyde Park today, which was not at all what I expected. It is huge, first of all, with a lot of trees, but not planted close together. There were so many little dogs running around off leash and lots of places for their "foul" to be put, (I thought that was a nice turn of phrase).  The Serpentine River runs through the park, it's really nice, a lot more ducks and there were some people rowing boats and riding horses too (but not on the river). I watched the skateboarders swiveling through orange cones for a while, and got some hot chocolate to sip on while reading my first Shakespeare assignment, Othello.

On my way back I walked past all these wonderful memorials, one to the Australian participation in world wars one and too with all these place names with water running over them, another just for world war one, and I think my favorite thing I've seen so far, the Wellington Arch. It has this great statue on top that reminded me of the winged victory of samothrace- nike. I then found out how close all the parks are, Hyde then Green then St. James, so I walked past Buckingham palace again.

I become a hermit

So my list of London Tourist Sites:

                                       

Westminster Abbey- definitely a cool place, also freezing... but the Cathedral is underrated. Worth a visit if only to see the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior which is kept always surrounded by red poppies. It is in the front and center of the pathway leading to the altar and not even the Queen is allowed to walk over it, which apparently makes processions difficult. It's funny though, that the warrior was unknown, to the point where the British aren't entirely sure that he was one of their countrymen. It could be an American soldier they are honoring, and his rank is a mystery as well, but he was given the funeral service of a Field Marshal. 

Churchill Museum- I was not crazy about this, the audio guide was very dry. The Museum itself was very interactive though, there is a long touch screen table with files chronicling every month of Churchill's life. One a few of those dates, such huge and important occurrences make the entire screen go a little mad, the date of the Titanic sinking, for example, makes the whole thing ripple. And the date that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima makes the screen go white, and then bold black lettering appears. It's as if they want us to be able to visualize what such an interruption in daily life would look like.

Tate Modern- not my favorite place in London so far, something about surrealist art bugs me. I met a French artist there who promised to sketch me, and I have to admit is the only foreign friend I have made on this trip! And I of course stood him up (he was about 58). So there you go. There was one exhibit I liked though, it was five video screens in blocks of colors playing scenes from contemporary movies about adolescent girls with supernatural powers, one of the screens showed Matilda making things fly about and another showed a girl starting fires with her mind- it was called Psi Girls.

   I also liked an exhibit of a table with the words written on it (in the artists own language) "the table is empty but it contains itself."

St. James Park- was very pretty, and I especially enjoyed all the ducks.

 Perhaps I'll enjoy it more in warmer weather, though. At any rate, it is the way to approach Buckingham Palace, and that was really cool... it has been the official residence of the British royal family since the 1800's, and has over 700 rooms. I only saw the outside, but it was so nicely situated, overlooking the pond and with lots of statues spitting water and topped with gold, very fitting.

Poetry Blog

In London, there is no escaping the poets. There are little blue circles dotting the entire city that commemorate dead celebrities, and there among the honored dead are the poets of England. There is T.S. Eliot, there is Tennyson, there is Shakespeare! They are everywhere.