I got this!

A few days ago, I relaxed. Not relaxed as in spending a day reading or lounging, but relaxing as in “I got this.” My whole psyche relaxed. The you-are-in-a-strange-city feeling that never went away … went away.

I had run through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, getting lost a little, but never feeling like I couldn’t find myself. Afterwards, I’d walked to Harrod’s (more an event than a shopping trip; I cannot imagine anyone finding anything they would actually buy in Harrod’s) and when I got outside, I noticed a #414 bus sign that said it was going to Putney Bridge, and I got on. I was going to visit my friend Lynel in Putney Common, and my little paper with Journey Planner notes didn’t have me going that way, but I still got on this new bus. And it worked.

Lynel mentioned a wonderful market, the North End Road Market, with very cheap grapes, and I discovered on Journey Planner that it’s a short #28 bus ride from my apartment. I’d never been on the #28 before. When I set out, I realized I’d left my Journey Planner cheat sheet at home, and I didn’t go back to get it. Not only that, I found “my” market for the rest of my stay.

I don’t need cheat sheets anymore. I know to look for the bus stop on the left side of the street, not the right. I know that if the ATM can’t dispense cash, it doesn’t mean I’ll be left destitute; it just means I have to try the machine next to it. I know good rest rooms in several corners of the city so I’m never desperate. They reopened the footpath that takes me right into Kensington Gardens so I don’t have to walk the long way around. I know how to send and receive texts on the iPhone.

Now I’m really enjoying myself!

After my fabulous month in New York City, I expected that I’d arrive in London and revel in excitement and pleasure right off the bat. But it wasn’t that easy here. In New York City, I felt like I’d entered my DNA environment, that I was surrounded by “my people.” I felt at home, a part of the culture and the way of being. I fit in right off the bat.

Before spending a summer in Costa Rica, I knew I’d be speaking Spanish, using a different currency, entering a different culture. I was prepared and ready to give it the time to become comfortable. I wasn’t prepared that way for London.

They may speak English here, but they’re British and I’m not. I haven’t figured out all the manifestations of that – and it’s interesting to reflect on – but I know it’s true. I’m a fish from a different ocean. I understand that, and it’s okay.

Important thing I’ve re-learned about myself in my Third Third:
       I need a certain baseline comfort level before I can appreciate my own adventurousness. Before I could feel relaxed in the apartment, for instance, I had to know where the light switches were, that this window opens more easily than that one, that the converter is more convenient in this outlet than that one. I needed to know that I kept underwear on this shelf, paints on that one. And knowing it automatically without having to re-think it each time. Once I could put 10% of my day into the routine column, I could handle the 90% of newness the rest of the day threw at me.

When I worked at the Anchorage Museum, I remember reading research on the best preparation for school field trips. Kids learned more on field trips when they were given instruction ahead of time not in content, but in where their coats will go, where the restrooms are, etc. It reduced their anxiety.

Now I know that every adventure either begins walking down Kensington Church Street to the High Street or up for Notting Hill Gate; turning left for the bus, right for the Tube. I don’t have to look at a map or plan my route. I just have to walk out the door.

So I do!

London with Someone Who Has Absolutely No Idea Where She's Going

Every day begins with Journey Planner, the London Transport online feature where you enter your “from,” your “to,” and whether you want to do it by bus or Tube or whatever. It even tells you which stop to stand at. Handy dandy, right?

The Journey Planner and I are having relationship difficulties. Journey Planner is fallible. Nevertheless, before I walk out the door each morning, I clutch a little piece of paper with my Journey Planner instructions. Here’s what a sample day’s might look like.

This is not even the most stressful thing about walking out the door. The MOST stressful thing is establishing – and reestablishing – that I have the key to the apartment. I think I’m developing a nervous tic of pocket checking. Here on my own, there are a few “no Plan B” potential predicaments, and getting locked out is one of them.

Now I’m out the door, but not to my usual #9-line bus, stop M. Today I’m taking the Tube from Notting Hill Gate. I reach the street and can’t remember whether it was left or right. I guess wrong. You can never get lost on the Tube. Never. It’s impossible. But you can get lost getting to the Tube.

I am waiting for the Circle line to Monument. The station always announces, “It might be faster to change at Earl’s Court for the District line.” So I courageously opt to change, this time to take the District line to Upminster (the last stop so it shows you’re headed in the right direction). But when the train shows up, it says it’s only going as far as Barking. Where is Barking?!? Is it before or after the stop I need?

This is like my third challenge of the day, and it’s still morning.

On the day I decide to visit the Columbia Road Flower Market, I have written out all my instructions … which correspond to nothing on the ground. Fortunately, there are wonderful “you are here” maps all over London.

I aim myself. I smell the flowers blocks away. The flower market is interesting and pretty and PACKED with humans on a 77-degree day. Too packed! All of London is on this street. I decide to take a different route back to the Tube station, seeing more of the Bethnal Green area.

Except I’m not. I’ve ended up somewhere else.

Soon I am on a street with graffiti and no handy “you are here” maps. The good thing about being in a neighborhood like this is that when I find a mom & pop store, I might be able to find cheaper grapes. Grape prices are my bellwether for judging cost. So far, grocery stores are running £4 a kilo, so I have to mentally convert both kilos and pounds. It comes to $4.98 for 2.2 pounds or $2.49 a pound. So that’s my benchmark. (Harrod’s grapes are £30 a kilo!) This mom & pop has 500 grams for £1, or half-price! I buy grapes. But I still don’t know where I am.

Finally, I see a nice, cool area to sit in. It turns out to be the front of the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood where I’d wanted to see the Board Game exhibit! This is the story of getting lost and getting found, and I go through it many times a day. Mild panic, great elation!

The exhibit is terrific. Not only do I learn that board game design followed the prevailing theories of childhood (play is good vs teaching is better); but I am lost in a nostalgia trip of games my siblings and I played. Mousetrap! Risk!

But now I have to figure out where I am again. The “here you are” map outside shows Brick Lane. I’ve already been to Brick Lane; I know Brick Lane! Brick Lane has the bagel (“beigel”) store! I’m found!

I arrive at a seemingly different Brick Lane: it’s market day and there are stalls in the middle of the street. Not packed, just fun and interesting. So as I’m pleasantly meandering down Brick Lane, I notice people walking into a doorway. I follow. Wow! It’s a take-away food extravaganza! There are stalls of people with electric woks from every country in the world: Singaporean food, Greek food, Burmese cuisine, Moroccan, Venezuelan! And on the outside of the building, a man is on a ladder painting a mural.

After walking down Brick Lane, I know where my trusty #15 bus stops, which will take me to my trusty #9. I spy a Tesco store, and now that I’m on my way home, I can get milk and won’t have to carry it too far. I go to the self-service cash register (“till”), and scan my milk.

“Place item in the bag loading area.” The voice booms out. I move the milk to the shelf.

“Place item in the bag loading area.” I move it to a different shelf.

 “PLACE ITEM IN THE BAG LOADING AREA!” I look around for a helpful attendant.

“PLACE ITEM IN THE BAG LOADING AREA!” I move the milk every which way. People stare. Finally, an attendant comes over and places my milk in the least obvious shelf of all.

I get so rattled by all this, I begin to leave … and spot my credit card still sitting in the machine. Yikes!!!! I could have walked out without it. Another “no Plan B” catastrophe averted.

My trusty #15 bus reliably moves along, with the reliably helpful voice announcing each stop and reliably showing it on the screen … until she announces we’re “on diversion” and we turn onto unfamiliar streets. Uh, oh! Uh, oh! Fortunately, I am going to the end of the line at Trafalgar Square so I don’t mind how divertingly I get there. And there’s bus stop S, right where it always is, right in front of the oh-so-familiar Canadian consulate on Cockspur Street!

I am happily practically home again, with my keys in my pocket. (I checked.) Another glorious, adventurous day. I’ll recover by morning.

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.

Of Victories and Mysteries

By the time my bag did not come off the baggage carousel in London’s Heathrow Airport, I was already on the panic path. I’d been fighting it through the nearly-interminable plane flights, through the realization that the man sitting next to me smelled terrible and he’d be there for nine hours. (Miraculously, my TV screen didn’t work so I had to be relocated! Hours of Bejeweled calm me.) Good luck struck again as my bag finally appeared on a neighboring carousel. All 50.0 pounds of it … which had to be lugged up stairs in Tube stations.

We’ll see if the 50.0 pounds are 50.0 pounds of stupidity. In New York City, I’d realized that I didn’t need many clothes because there was no one to notice I was wearing them days in a row. But last time I was in London in April, Sophie and I froze, so this time I came bearing many layers.

I was so brave about going to New York all alone. Ha! My mother was two hours away by Long Island Railroad, I had cousins all over, and I knew the transit system. Friends in London sent me a London bus map, which I pored over for hours, but it all felt so unfamiliar. There was no grid! Suddenly, my quest for New Things seemed over-the-top. I kept thinking no one had held a gun to my head, why did I invent this month?

But there are always little victories that bolster the spirit, restore confidence, and dispel panic, little by little.

Little Victories:

• I found the light switches in the apartment! Some took a while. I also found the electric outlets. The woman renting the apartment is wonderful – even provided food for my arrival – but she’d departed when it was still light out.

I found a grocery store! I won’t starve.
 

I managed to locate bus stop M to catch the #390 bus to Tottenham Court Road! This is an even bigger victory because I deviated from the walking instructions I’d written out for myself by detouring to another park, and I still found bus stop M!

I gave myself 5 hours to look for Sir John Soane’s Museum before the special evening hours tour by candlelight. Turns out I showed up at 1:53, and there was a tour of closed areas at 2! I got to see his giant scale re-creation of Pompeii made out of cork!
 

As I wandered around with all my extra, unused “look for it” hours, I came upon other things on my six pages of To See notes. Oh, that’s where they are! Practically every corner has a wonderful “you are here” map. They’re so good, the front and back of the signs change the perspective of the map, too. Aha, I can find my way around!
 

I got my library card first thing! Since I have not been able to figure out the iPhone, I came across a library, went in, and used the computer to find out which bus I could take home. A #9 bus from bus stop S!

Bigger Mysteries:

• Why does the iPhone keep telling me I’m not connected to the server? I have the little sound waves showing I am. I’m just fine with my little papers of where I’m going, and I can tell that soon I’ll have absorbed the structure of London in my head; but I still don’t know why I’m having difficulty. I did manage to get a London phone number, but that’s the tiniest of little victories.

• Buskers are everywhere and amazing. The man painted silver held one arm out, grabbing the handle of a shovel which was the only point attached to the ground. He was floating! Then he spun around and resumed his position, holding on by the one hand on the shovel. HOW DID HE DO THAT? Later on, I found a Yoda doing the same thing. And how did another man squeeze himself through the tennis racket frame????

• Major mystery: why I have not been hit by a car yet. Painted on the street are giant words saying “LOOK LEFT” and “LOOK RIGHT” with arrows. But when there are curves or no traffic lights, and you think you can cross, I am invariably wrong. Two near misses in one day, and that doesn’t count the bicycle.

Panic has evaporated. Both victories and mysteries do their bit: the victories restore self-confidence, and the mysteries provide the fuel of discovery. It’s why I’m here. It’ll be a good month.

Facing our Third Third

Every now and then, one of my adventures could more accurately be called a misadventure. Vanity was the root cause, but de-cluttering and age-defiance made this one a perfect Third Third storm.

A little background: A couple years ago, I participated in an online research study by graduate students at my alma mater. I can’t remember what it was meant to investigate, but I had to submit a photo, and they would “age” it and return it to me. The first photo was rejected; I was smiling too much. Maybe if you’re happy you can’t be “aged”?

The second photo came back and totally freaked me out. I looked OLD, really OLD. I looked grayish – and not just my hair – and there were lines all over my face. Ever since then, I’ve watched the mirror vigilantly, assessing whether I’m turning into the photo.

About a month ago, during the great yarn bombing/knitting vandalism episode, I was interviewed for a news video. Despite being very happy in the video, all I could see was that my face was turning into that grayish, lined face in that old-looking photograph. It haunted me.

When they had me back for a second interview, I actually put on eye makeup. I talked to friends about trying to look better … groomed. But it’s hard because I have finicky skin that doesn’t like most things, and because … well, make-up just doesn’t seem to show up on my list of to-do’s.

Around about this time, I was de-cluttering and came across some very, very old gift bags from Estée Lauder, the kind you get as a prize when you buy cosmetics. As I poked through the bags, I found a never-opened tube of some sort of gentle, luxurious face cleanser.

Tell me, what would you do? Your face has developed lines and you suddenly rediscover a “gentle, luxurious face cleanser”? The only cleanser my face knows is water. Maybe it was time to add some luxury, to make an effort. It felt soft. Luxurious.

Until the red bumps appeared. Bumps that didn’t go away. Bumps that eventually got crusty. On my face.

I pulled out all my ideas of a cure: alcohol, lotions, soaps. A face that knew only water, moisturizers, and sunscreen was now a test site for anything I could drag out of the bathroom cabinets. (Smart people are saying, “What on earth were you thinking?!?”) Hey, I stopped before I tried mouthwash on the bumps.

The dermatologist sighed when he looked at my face. Near as I can understand, I’ve disrupted the flora and fauna of my face, and it is going to be very hard to get it back to normal. Like months and months of hard. I have to put tiny amounts of steroid on it, see if it works, stop, re-start, see if it works.

I’m spending a lot of time looking in the mirror.

I don’t recommend it.

What I’ve learned:

• Third Third lines may be preferable to First Third-looking bumps.


• Sometimes clutter shouldn’t be repurposed, recycled, or transformed into treasure. Sometimes clutter just belongs in the garbage.

Marijuana's Third Third

You know you are deep, deep into your Third Third when you are listening to a conversation about marijuana and the women are discussing cannabis and hot flashes, night sweats, and menopause.

Pause. I need to recover from that sentence.

It gets worse. They went on a personally-organized field trip to local marijuana dispensaries. Another woman is upset she wasn’t included.

You look at them. They are wearing fashionable clothes – with accessories! Their hair is nicely coifed, gray is either stylish or colored.

Another pause for brain readjustment. Sometimes I think I should not be writing blog posts; I should be writing a pilot for a sitcom.

The women decide I have to disguise them so no one reading this will guess who they are. “Angela” has always wanted to be an Angela so she is very excited at giving herself this new identity. She assigns aliases to the others. “Jolene” and I stare at the group; who are these people, and what did they do to our friends?

The women had a general idea of where a dispensary was located so they drove up and down the street till they were sure one building might be it. Once, while traveling out of town, they’d come upon a long line of people on the sidewalk. It was either a soup kitchen or an iPhone giveaway, but when they Googled the address, it turned out to be a dispensary. So I guess that gave them experience in dispensary identification.

The proprietors were very helpful. The women learned about CBD oil, which is supposed to be curative but doesn’t make you high. (But one of the women already knew about CBD oil from her son.) They learned about vaporizers. “Is that a bong? Like a perfume atomizer?” No. They got free, hand-made, terra cotta pipes as a little gift. They bought a small caramel/chocolate star.

Angela learned why her first foray into cannabis was not a success. Apparently, she learned, you have to toast something to work with it. I think she was making salve. (Not being on the field trip, my understanding of all this is a little sketchy. I took notes for the sitcom pilot, but they’re a little sparse, and there were no visual aids.) So Angela wanted to borrow someone’s toaster oven to do this in her garage. The concern: the neighbors would smell it. The solution: smoke some salmon at the same time. So maybe she’ll apply fish-scented salve to her body or eat marijuana-laced smoked salmon.

Angela tried her little star. Just a point. I’m not sure if that’s the experience that left her singing through housecleaning or if that was something else.

“Jolene” has been quiet throughout the adventure travel recap. She spent her youthful rebellion moving in the other direction from a counter-culture mother. While every now and then we all feel like we’re turning into our mothers, I imagine Jolene is watching her circle of friends turn into her mother. The field-trippers turn to her.

“Jolene, do you think your mother has some other source for marijuana?”

Jolene must recover enough because a few minutes later, she shares a text from her mother: “OMG.” Is this shock speaking or mother-daughter bonding?

Meanwhile, another friend of mine has organized Ellementa, a start-up for women to learn about cannabis wellness. And a Seattle-area assisted living community is organizing Pot 101 field trips. My Jewish newsletter just sent out a recipe for pot-laced matzoh brei for Passover: Potzoh Brei. What is the world coming to?

Unfortunately, the women have learned that cannabis doesn’t do anything for wrinkles.

But that’s because they’re not lying around on waterbeds listening to Pink Floyd. It has nothing to do with not being 20 anymore either.

Not a scaredy-cat – a worrywart

Recently, the subject of bravery came up, as in “Barbara, you’re so brave to head off to another city for a month alone.” So I started writing about fear, but realized I kept mixing it up with worry. I wrote that “fear and worry riddle my life,” but by the time I finished, I knew that was wrong: fear compels decisions, worry riddles my life.

Sometimes I make choices based on my personal hierarchy of fear: is this less scary than that? So, for example, I’m not going down the Grand Canyon. When I wrote here about Becoming a Wimp in my Third Third, it was a full year-and-a-half out from the planned raft trip. I canceled. Heights and cliffs and rapids – nope. I’m going to London instead. Compared to the Grand Canyon, London didn’t even register on the trauma charts. (Not even today.)

Some things simply don’t scare me. While surveys show that most people fear public speaking more than anything else – more than death – it doesn’t give me pause. Just give me a little preparation, and I’m good to go. I even enjoy it.

People who don’t live in Alaska think much of our normal, daily living is fearful. Moose in backyards, bears in parks, mountains, wilderness, earthquakes – those may send a tiny speck of shiver down Alaskans, but mostly they just arouse caution.

The big list of American fears includes heights, bugs and snakes, claustrophobia – I am all about being scared of those things – but there are SO MANY other things that fuel fear. This is my current big fear: Tim will drown in the Grand Canyon, I will crash on the plane to London, and Sophie will be all alone.

I cannot believe I even wrote that sentence down, as if voicing it unleashes some horrible karma in the universe. Right now, my superstitious self is crawling with anxiety.

And then I worry that all the resultant cortisol pumping through my system is wreaking its own havoc.

Fear cascading upon fear. What ifs generating more and more calamities. Imagination run amok. Is this the process that turns fear into worry?

Gasp. Do other people do this???

In my Third Third, as I reflect, I don’t think I really discovered fear until I had a child. The responsibility for someone so essentially vulnerable is the biggest, scariest thing I’ve ever encountered. Even so, I didn’t want that child to be limited by my fear so I kept our lives open to travel and outdoor adventure. Ziplines, climbing, skiing. Trusting strangers, being independent. Caution, but not fear. Now that she’s older, some of the things she tells me scare the willies out of me, but I keep my mouth shut.

My siblings used to joke about two kinds of people in the world: “emotional cripples” and “kamikazes.” I was the kamikaze of the family because, when faced with decisions, I often leaped. That must have looked like bravery, but it’s really fear of sluggish indecision, of dawdling about in some hesitant limbo land. The reason I do is not because I have no fear of doing but because I have a HUGE fear of stagnation. Of letting my world become small.

I realize it’s not all about fear. It’s about interest, curiosity, and preference and how they can offset fear. Something in me dreams about London but worries about the Grand Canyon. So while I might be worried about a long airplane flight, it’s required if I’m going to get to London. (It’s required to live in Alaska, period….) In the hierarchy of fears, it had to get displaced. Maybe the secret is displacing the fears that don’t serve us.

The opposite of fearful might be brave, but the opposite of worried would be … calm? My interior worries – the imagined what ifs, the squirrelly feelings, the worst-case scenarios – are things that scare me from the inside out and have nothing to do with heights or river rapids or cliffs. I’m not a scaredy-cat; I’m a worrywart. You would think by my Third Third I would have dealt with this.

But right now, I’m worried that while I’m writing, sitting is the new smoking, and how many hours a day do I spend sitting?

Next I’m trying meditation. Do we do that sitting down?