London with Someone Who Knows Where He's Going

Quite a while back, when Gene and I worked together at Out North, I always felt like he knew everything there was to know about theater. Not only did he know the stage part, but he taught me things about ticket numbering, about backstage, about fund raising, you name it.

Now, visiting him in London, I see that Gene just knows A LOT, period. I also see that his heart of gold is still intact. Not only did he send me all sorts of helpful stuff beforehand in a big envelope, but he gave me an outing in London that becomes the perfect example of London-with-a-capital-L. (You can contrast this with the next post, which will be the story of a bumbling day with Barbara.)

We started out at the Borough Tube station. (Gene knew to pick that because it has only one entrance so I couldn’t get lost.) We then walked down the street. He was going to take me into the oldest pub in London, the George Inn, but it turned out a film shoot was happening inside. It was a gangster film, and the gangster actors were hanging out, waiting for their entrance.

We circled around Guy’s Hospital, and Gene always found little nooks and crannies. At the hospital is a courtyard with a statue of John Keats sitting in a little stone nook and looking so poetical.

On the wall nearby, a blue oval (the sign that means something historical happened here) featured Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher bane of my year in graduate school. Wittgenstein was a drug runner!

“Goosey goosey gander,

Whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs

And in my lady's chamber.”

Gene took me to the Cross Bones Graveyard, for the “Outcast Dead.” Apparently, the prostitutes south of the Thames would signal their availability while waving and wearing white gloves. The gloves – arms hooked at the wrists – looked like geese, and these “Winchester Geese” were buried in unconsecrated ground, now decorated with ribbons of remembrance.

The rest of the rhyme speaks to the rounding up of Catholic priests by the Protestants, so we also stopped by the Anglican Bishop of Winchester’s palace as well as his private prison, “The Clink.”

“There I met an old man

Who wouldn't say his prayers,

So I took him by his left leg

And threw him down the stairs.”

Walking by the Desmond Tutu Room in Southwark Cathedral, we came upon double doors. Written in large letters on the floor:

Near the Cathedral, a large plaque describes the Legend of Mary Overie: Her father, a terrible miser, faked his death so his servants would fast for a day and save money on food. The servants were so happy, they feasted instead, which so enraged her father, he jumped up. The servants, thinking he was the Devil, beat him to death. Mary was so upset, she sent for her lover, who rushed to claim the inheritance, fell from his horse, and broke his neck.

Yes, this is the kind of story appearing on a historical plaque.

Mary, by the way, was so distressed, she used the inheritance to found a convent and was sainted.

Modern London is just as … irreverent. Their skyline, in order, is the Cheese Grater, the Gherkin, and the Walkie Talkie.

We went in a cheese-monger shop where giant cylinders of cheese were on racks and we could taste them by age. The Borough Market was an astounding feast of produce, jams, olive oils, teas, cheese, ciders, spices, fish, breads. It was an incredible display of raw abundance, a Costco of the homemade!

Every now and then, we’d wander (deliberately, because Gene knows where they are) into a little hidden gem of a park, a place with a pond or walk that was so quiet you wouldn’t know you were in the middle of London. It’s something so smart about London, creating quiet spaces. I think of how Anchorage’s parks are active spaces, and I appreciate the quiet oases here.

Then, of course, I had to sit in the Ferryman’s Seat, an ancient stone seat embedded in a wall in Southwark. The ferryman would sit there and wait for his fares. In reading Prophecy, the Cityread London book, they mention hiring wherries to go up and down the Thames, so it’s all starting to fit together!

After five hours on the trail of London’s history with Gene, we crossed to Trafalgar Square via the very special crossing lights:

Gene deposited me exactly on time at the National Gallery for my workshop, “Relaxing with Paintings,” for Slow Art Day. It was a brilliantly orchestrated day … to be contrasted with the stumbling serendipities I encounter on my own. Only later did Gene tell me that a few minutes after I entered the Gallery, a helicopter landed in nearby Trafalgar Square to medevac out a woman who got hit by a bus. I bet she was a tourist, I bet she forgot to look right, and I’m glad her injuries are non-life-threatening.

I never cross a street without looking both ways, multiple times, and only moving when someone else steps out, too.

On edge and sitting there

I woke from an anxiety dream last night. The kind where you have that heart-stopping, throat-closing, stomach-lifting feeling as if you’d dropped off a high-diving board. I don’t remember the dream, but I know why I had it.

I feel like I’m not doing my Third Third right. (It is a positive sign that I’m not saying I’m failing at it, but that’s the feeling.) I have one friend who hopped on a bicycle and has covered the country and is still going. Another who took up photography and is preparing for her first solo exhibition.

And I’m still sitting here.

Okay, I’ve been to Machu Picchu, been back to care for and visit my mother, explored Vermont and Portland. I’m excited by this blog and the creativity it inspires. I thoroughly enjoy the classes I teach as a volunteer, and I’m challenged by a contract I’m presently working on and the problem-solving I need to address for it.

Enough of the floor work is done and things moved back into their places (and dusted and vacuumed!) so that I’m not living in chaos.

So what gives?

In re-loading the bookshelves, I came across the giant envelope full of photos. I put it in the box with all the other unsorted, tossed-in-the-box photos. To work on the floors, I put on a pair of old jeans that needed mending. When I pulled out my sewing supplies, I saw the still-unfinished quilt. I finished browsing a magazine, tearing out a couple pages of recipes I’d like to try, and added them to the pile of many more recipes-I’d-like-to-try. The mint and chives are still unharvested from the garden, and I know it’ll be too late when snow lands on them.

I saw a movie where they said, “Sitting is the new smoking,” and here I sit. My feet developed some odd pain after the Mayor’s Half-Marathon (in June!), and I haven’t been running barely at all since then.

Yes, I know this is whining. This is WHINING. I would be horrified except that I’m making the excuse that if it’s in this blog, maybe other people will identify with it and think they’re not so alone after all. I’m still horrified.

I just don’t like feeling this way. This on-edge, unsatisfied, fidgety, uncentered feeling. Even my clothes feel uncomfortable. I guess I keep hoping for a once-and-for-all resolution to life questions, that I figure it out and I’m good. That things on my list get DONE.

I’d been excited to solve the goose poop problem at Cuddy Park. People had all come together from all different agencies with lots of good ideas. And then they all separated, and I can see that the solution for one is going to create unintended consequences for another and they really need to be brought together to decide on solutions. But I’m only a volunteer. A volunteer amongst volunteers is fine, but no one listens to the volunteer in an interdepartmental crowd. So that’s a fizzle.

I know this is all to be expected in our Third Thirds. That trying new things means some won’t work out, but that failing to try would be the real tragedy. That coming up with too many new things means some – a lot! – won’t get done. As always, I know that “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Okay, today I’ll put one foot in front of the other and make an appointment with the podiatrist. (!) The rain has stopped. Maybe first I’ll go out for a run.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (one of my heroes) said, “We are what we pretend to be….” So right now, I’m going to pretend to be a runner with a lift in her legs. Let’s see if that works.

Save the World ... from goose poop

When I first unemployed myself, I was looking for Save the World kind of endeavors. I thought that I would be valuable as a mature person to do something heroic. Like, if there were still voter registration drives in the South, that’s what I’d do. As it was, all I could think of was lying down in front of bulldozers in the West Bank, protecting olive trees and residences. That idea just didn’t get the needed traction….

So my next Big Idea was to establish a mobile long-term contraception van, like the ones that do mammograms. Sophie had awakened me to the idea of long-term – like 5 years! – contraception, and I thought, Wow, wouldn’t that make a difference in the lives of some women! And if the problem is access to the clinic, then the van could go around where the women are and provide this service.

Way back, I started volunteering with adult literacy, feeling bad for adults who missed out on learning to read. But eventually I felt that it would be best to intervene before they fell so far behind, so I started teaching at the university and volunteering in elementary classrooms. Then I started doing storytimes for preschoolers. But even that wasn’t early enough: I spent the last 5+ years working in early childhood, the formative years from birth to 5.

And you know what? That isn’t soon enough.

So I was hot for this mobile contraception van. When Colorado provided free long-term contraception, the teenage birth rate fell 40% and abortions fell 42%. Is that incredible! Think of the time this gave young women to get themselves on track. Think what better mothers they could be!

I was ready to Make This Happen. I even set up a meeting with people who could be part of something like this. They were into it. And then … I ran out of steam. My disinterest ho-hum paralysis hit. I don’t know if it was the perception that it was too big or if it would mean doing the outreach and project management I wasn’t wanting to do anymore or if I was somehow de-energized. I just drooped. That was the blah period which made me very worried about my Third Third. Would I stay like this forever?!?

Eventually, I got myself motivated. (If nothing changes, nothing changes.) I looked around for a replacement Big Idea and said, “What could I do that needs to be done, is do-able in manageable bites, and that nobody else seems to be fixing?”

That’s when I looked at the vile, filthy cesspool that the geese have turned Cuddy Family Midtown Park into. The geese are eroding the pond banks. They’re disgusting, combative, and constantly pooping. Goose shit covers the paths. And people keep feeding them! I said, “I can start to get this pile of goose shit fixed.”

Fortunately, on just my second fact-finding mission, I met Cherie with the Anchorage Waterways Council. Cherie’s big concern is the water pollution. Did you know that the pond at Cuddy Park has about 400 times the amount of E. coli you’d want in a place where people played around the water?

So slowly but surely, we’re assembling knowledgeable folks who can take a stab at this blight. Some people are wild life people worried about the health of the birds. Others are parks people who worry about the yuck factor and the erosion of the banks. Others are public information people who want to get people to stop feeding the waterfowl. And everyone’s worried about airplanes.

This is one thorny issue. I had no idea the Cuddy Park pond problem began as the solution to the Spenard flooding problem (the Law of Unintended Consequences…) So forget about “do-able in manageable bites.” More like “chew-able in manageable bites.”

Ha, it might have been easier to get a contraception van.