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.