Reflections on Return #2: Things I Loved about London

Parks!
    47% of London is green space. London’s parks are flat, wide, open expanses of lawn … except when they’re little, quiet spaces tucked into corners here and there. In the middle of a busy intersection, there’d be a square with lawn, flowers, benches, and always at least one statue. Everything clean and beautifully maintained. Something in me loved the openness, the flatness, the far-as-the-eye-can-see illusion. As an antidote to the big city, it worked.

Little nooks and crannies
    Gene taught me the word flâneurie, the act of wandering into secret courtyards and tucked-away corners as you explore a city on foot. In my own neighborhood, I walked behind the church and discovered Kensington Church Walk, a little alley with shops, a school, a little garden oasis. It was like entering a storybook. I couldn’t resist an alleyway in London.

British “Schemes”
    Unlike in American English, British schemes are not just secret or dishonest ones, they’re “a plan for doing or organizing something.” My favorites:

• the Considerate Constructors Scheme: construction sites follow the Code of Considerate Practice which governs the appearance of the site and the construction workers, respecting the community, protecting the environment, etc. Construction workers dress in full neon jumpsuits – yellows, oranges, greens.

• the Community Toilet Scheme: Local businesses make their clean, safe, and accessible toilets available to the public. There’s a pocket map, window signs, and an interactive map online. I only discovered this after carefully creating my own restroom directory, but what a great idea.

The buses! (of course)

• The main entrance to the bus is on a level with the street so strollers, walkers, wheelchairs board easily. Then the able-bodied walk up the stairs to the upper deck. In the U.S., why does the main entrance require going up stairs, which then requires lifts and kneeling and all sorts of workarounds?

• The upholstery on the buses is beautiful and pristine! In the U.S., we had to give up on that because they were carved up with knives. America is reduced to hard plastic.

• Every Tube car has a readable map and an understandable voice announcing the stops. Every bus has a digital sign and voice announcing the stops. They’re not broken, out-of-order, or garbled.

The signage
    You figure this one out:

I loved that street signs are giant-size and way up on the sides of buildings so you can see them easily. No signs on poles blocked by trees or people or missing.

• Their signs say “Way Out” instead of “Exit.”
• All those life-saving, easy-to-understand, ever-available “You Are Here” signs!

No goose or duck poop at the ponds!
    I don’t know how they do this, and I’ve asked everyone I can. There are swans and geese and ducks and even a heron. The ponds are encircled by paved areas, but right next to those are the wide, grassy lawns. People lie on the lawns! They have picnics and play games! I don’t see them shrieking over landing on goose poop. In all my time in the parks, I only saw maybe two goose poops. Do they wash off the pavements? Vacuum the lawns? How do they do it?!?

Museum engagement programs and tours
    Every hour, the Tate Modern holds a different tour. Every day at 4 pm, the National Gallery has a 10-minute tour of a single painting; twice a day is the regular tour of five paintings. In between is “Listen and Look,” “Talks for All,” “Talk and Draw.” While everyone is just cruising through the museums, you have the option for greater engagement and immersion.

North End Road Market, Jaffa Bake House, Aly Mir’s tours, Time Out weekly magazine
    I took three of Aly’s free tours, ones he privately researches and orchestrates. His devotees are locals who come back for the new ones he adds to the repertoire. Not only did Aly remember me from tour to tour, but this was always the place people talked with me and reached out.

My friend Lynel just told me that on her recent visit to the Jaffa Bake House, they asked if I’d gotten back to Alaska all right and when was I returning! This is the happiest news of all, casting a warm glow over my whole time there.

Reflections on Return #1

I’m back – semi-recovered from 10 hours of time zone change and 14 hours of flights – and I’m reflecting. What did this month in London do for me in my Third Third?

First off, it was harder than I’d expected. One friend says, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” and I hovered at my edge for quite a while. Life may begin at the end, but self-awareness comes from the edge.

I learned I’m not a hermit.
Mostly, when you’re a writer or artist, you spend time alone. After a while, you can think you’re not very social, you’re pretty autonomous, you’re a loner. So you think you can spend time in a new city all by yourself and still thrive.

Ha!

My loner life at home includes a husband who comes home every day, friends in the same time zone and on the same phone system I can call whenever. I may work quietly by myself, but it isn’t endless quiet. During my month in Manhattan, I had a mother every weekend, a daughter and sister visiting, cousins and friends sprinkled all over. I may have traveled solo, but I wasn’t living solo.

London was solo. Tim was unreachable on the Grand Canyon, and my only phone was British. The people sitting next to me in theaters and at lectures were British.

I re-learned I’m an Alaskan American with ethnic roots. Very not-British.
Yes, I cringed at the American who kept whining during a lecture, “I can’t understand what he’s saying.” I didn’t learn that I was a rude American or an insensitive one. I’m just an American who talks to strangers …

… and that is not done. This is an ad to sell newspapers:

The connections I made with strangers – the ones that were warm, engaging, sharing, and acknowledging – were made with Indians, Middle Easterners, other Jews, and a guy married to an American. So mostly, I was rebuffed until I learned to just sit there by myself.

I learned self-confidence is not a permanent human characteristic.
Given social isolation, unfamiliar geographic features, a different currency, and inexplicable cultural habits; and the formerly self-confident become scared little rabbits.

I became a scared little rabbit. Worries swam relentlessly in my head, unrelieved by human interaction. Worries compounded till they were just free-floating anxiety. Free-floating anxiety only stopped when it turned into outright panic. I diagnosed myself as a basket case. I worried for my mental health.

I re-learned that I get up.
Little by little, things improved. I learned my way around, connected with my three friends in London, was welcomed at a Passover seder. Tim became Skype-accessible; my sister visited. Going to a play with her meant I had someone to laugh with.

Every time I walked outside, I’d feel the flush of wellbeing as London’s spring drove out my Alaskan winter seasonal affective disorder. My runs got longer. The flowers got more colorful.

I went back to talking to strangers, but I picked them better. Besides, I had friends to spend time with now, to have real conversations with.

When I got hopelessly lost getting both in and out of the Barbican Centre, I only escaped because I saw some funny lines on a map and discovered the skywalks and ended up at the Guildhall. Weeks later, in a conversation with the director of The City Centre, he said, “Everyone gets lost in the Barbican,” there are design issues. Oh, it’s like surviving Kincaid Park here in Anchorage! I am not a total nincompoop; it’s a confusing place!

I’m still processing all this. (It’s what I do.) Learning that I get back up hasn’t overshadowed the surprise to my psyche that I crashed, but there were also so many wonderful things that intrigued and enriched me. Those are the next post.

Bye-bye, London

I didn’t realize how sad I’d feel leaving until hearing from my friend, Alyse. She’s just arrived in London from Alaska, and I shared some “must do’s.” She’s doing all of them, and I realize: she has it all in front of her.

So when I spent a lovely day in Richmond Park yesterday with Gene and Jay, we had to say goodbye. They saved me from loneliness here in London, and it was SO GOOD to have day-long conversations – and even texts! – with them. Later on today, I’ll say goodbye to Lynel, who gave me homeyness to relax in over dinner and conversation. We’ll meet at Jaffa Bake House, where I’ve already stocked up on manakeesh to bring back to Alaska.

I’ve run my last run through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Yes, I still get hopelessly lost. Between diagonal paths and my innate sense of misdirection, I tend to crisscross the parks and double my mileage, but how else would I discover Reformers’ Tree (or where it used to be) or Peter Pan? And yet, there are still undiscovered corners.

I got here with exactly 50.0 pounds of luggage, and I’ve added three books. When I met the author of the Cityread London book, Prophecy, she explained that the next in the series aren’t available in the U.S., so what was I going to do? Leave behind the one she signed for me?

So now I’m trying to decide whether the Costco bags of my pumpkin flax cereal and raisins, which I brought here and consumed, equal the weight of three books (and six manakeesh). I wish I hadn’t brought the never-used heavy coat and raincoat, but maybe having them allowed for the great weather I had.

Mostly, I have to decide which of the memorabilia is crucial and which will only qualify as clutter in a couple of months.

London phone number 077 1966 1868 will expire and move on to someone new. I will not get to do Aly Mir’s free walking tour of “Suffragette City” out of Holborn on May 12. Not “Learning to Look” on May 6 at the National Gallery, either.

This is the third of my longer-term stays in other places. After Costa Rica and New York, I had the same feeling I do now: that I was leaving some life behind. I’d managed to carve a little space for myself – my bus routes, my favorite places, my running route, my less expensive grocery store – and then I let it go.

I’m going back to a special dinner, two luncheons, a workshop, and my Friday morning women. I’m going back to Transformed Treasures, the Thursday morning group, my bricolage group, and David Sedaris.

Mostly and happily, I’m going back to Tim.

I’m going back to our own bed, the couch in the living room, cars that drive on the right side of the road, and being around Alaskan Americans. I’m still reflecting on this whole experience and what I take from it for my Third Third, but I’ll write about that later.

Right now, it’s London that I’m leaving and I feel sad.

Bombs Fell Here

War happened here. You can’t spend an hour in London without knowing that bombs fell here, that World War II was very up close and personal. People tell you that newer buildings mean that the previous buildings were bombed out. Over dinner, someone mentions that the house next door was bombed out. Henry Moore’s drawings of crowds of people camped out in Tube stations are on display in several museums. Sixty percent of London homes were bombed out during the Blitz.

I was invited to a lovely Passover dinner in the home of a London rabbi. I sat next to Gabriela, who told me of her family’s escape from Germany in the nick of time. In a car ride home, I listened to Wanda tell me of her family’s escape from Milan.

On a tour of Farringdon, a neighborhood in London, the tour guide pointed out which blocks were destroyed. There are maps showing which bomb fell on which house on which date. He pointed out where the market was, that casualties were high because housewives had received notice that a supply of rabbits had come in for meat. He told us the difference between the V-1 and V-2 rockets; you could hear the V-1 Doodlebug, but the V-2 was silent. You would hope you could keep hearing the Doodlebug because if it stopped over you, that meant it was falling.

Everywhere, there are war memorials, big, stone monuments to valor and courage and tenacity. We have those in the United States, too. But other than Pearl Harbor and the Aleutians, war did not land on our soil in the 20th century. (Although I think I might count New York City.) That makes a difference.

We did not hide in Anderson shelters or Tube stations; we didn’t listen for the buzzing of Doodlebugs. We didn’t clean up rubble afterwards or overload our hospitals. And if we did, it didn’t permeate our national consciousness. Here in London, at first they didn’t let people camp in the Tube stations; they thought it would lead to a “deep shelter mentality” with people refusing to come back out.

In the United States, our government didn’t have to consider what to do if Americans became so scared they would be afraid to come out. War wasn’t on our soil. We haven’t known the invasiveness of this fear, the way it would pervade daily life.

Jane Churchill created an art exhibit here titled Echoes Across the Century, and I’ve gone back to it several times (once to meet her!). With the exhibit – and the help of 240 school children and their art – Jane ties together the experience of soldiers, families, and the workers on the home front who supplied them. We follow a fiancée (Jessie) as she mounts her moth collection and remarks on the “…thousands of men pinned forever to the map of France like moths pinned lifeless in boxes, unable to fly again.” We follow the makers of eyeglasses who began to issue spectacles to recruits because the Army could no longer reject soldiers with poor eyesight. And the students imagine what those soldiers see with their mind’s eye.

Jessie created lachrymatoria – tiny bottles filled with her tears – describing each memory she had of Will. We don’t know what of the exhibit is real and what is imagined – intentionally. Did Jessie make the bottles, or did the artist? Or did the students? It doesn’t matter: all of it rings true and all of it hurts. Fear and loss are very real, and everywhere we see and feel what happens when a whole country – all its people, sectors, laborers – are part of that experience every day.

I went to the movies and saw Their Finest; bombs fall on homes and people camp in Tube stations. Of course, I think, being here has readied me to watch this movie. The tours, the conversations, the exhibits have prepared me.

In the U.S., war happens to the unlucky few and their families. It’s something “somewhere else” to “someone else.” It occurs to me here in London that we Americans need to remember that. We need to understand our different feelings about War and Allies and Treaties and Protection. And always, we need to thank our lucky stars.

This Slightly Different Barbara

Why do I do this? Why do I pick a city and find my way around it for a month? It’s for Art! Capital-A Art. (Okay, Capital-C Culture, too.) Art that blows my mind with creative thinking and new ways of looking at the world and human existence. Art that, at the end of my month, still lives inside me and has changed the Barbara that is. It may be my Third Third, but my world expands to feel as if I have six or seven Thirds to go!

Right away, I signed up to experience two hours of Slow Art Day at the National Gallery. On April 8, hundreds of museums around the world celebrate what Thoreau described: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” After a brief introduction about mindfulness, focusing ourselves, and removing distractions, we were taken to a quiet gallery to sit in front of a painting. I picked Monet’s Water Lily Pond. I looked at it. It’s a bridge over a pond, lots of water lilies. I looked.

Our museum guide asked, “What does the air feel like in your painting?” Oh, wow! That air was a bit muggy, humid, but there was a breeze. Suddenly, I’d entered the painting. I kept looking, and then the painting turned liquid, turned into water. I realized that all of it wasn’t junk and leaves in the water, it was just light reflecting in it! Monet had found the light and the liquid and made water!

Mostly, she was silent, but then the guide asked, “Where are you in the painting?” and I was on the bridge. She asked, “Are you moving?” and I was in a kayak sliding through the pond, and the lilies were separating and there was so much liquid water. Sometimes I’d lose Monet’s liquid, but then – after looking again – it would come back. It would turn into water. Paint into water.

So it wasn’t that I’d found new Art; it was that I found a new way into the Art. They called the day “Relax with Paintings,” and it was all about taking the time and quiet to just look.

To find new Art, I go to the Tate Modern. Free tours of specific galleries are offered hourly, and I take a different one each time. Grace took us to Lee Ufan’s Relatum, 100 flat bands of 2-meters-long stainless steel. She said they didn’t come arranged or numbered; the museum curator had to lay them out. It was a way of making the art relate to its new environment, that the art wasn’t pre-determined and self-contained. It lived, and I liked it.

I’d managed to score a ticket to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Yes, I went because Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) was in it, but I’d read Tom Stoppard plays and was curious to see if they could be comprehended in performance. They’re so loaded with philosophical inquiry and lines of thought, I just couldn’t imagine being able to process them thrown out on stage.

Oh, wow, I shouldn’t have worried. The play was extraordinary … and devastating. In Stoppard’s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (only minor characters in Hamlet who end up dying for no real reason) immerse themselves in existential questioning about meaning, about dying, about living. It’s brutal … but you laugh OUT LOUD. It’s brilliant.

So then, I’m back at the Tate Modern. In A Pot of Boiling Water, Song Dong of China started way back in an alley with a kettle of boiling water. As he walked, he poured it out in a stream. A line of water appeared until it evaporated and was gone. Only 12 photographs – from back in the alley to right up front – record the event. Our marks in the world are temporary. It was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern again!

The following week, the free “Listen and Learn” talk at the National Gallery was on Monet’s painting, and I was excited to hear what the curator had to say. But when I arrived, I was told there’d been a switch; now they were going to talk about some guy named Constable. Who’s he?

A couple hundred people were in chairs around a big, gloomy, jig saw puzzle painting. Yuck! The curator asked if everyone loved it, and everyone else said yes. He explained that the painting, The Hay Wain, was engraved in their DNA. He joked that after Brexit, that painting would be a test of whether you were British or not. Not-British Barbara learned to appreciate that painting. To appreciate it. I even got up to look at it close up.

I could go on and on. To not describe Marina Abromavic’s Rhythm 0 is to leave out a piece of art (performance?) that will haunt me forever. I’d seen Picasso’s Guernica in Spain, but his Weeping Woman – and the guide’s information about it – broke my heart.

Back to the National Gallery for the free “Look and Draw.” Forty of us were seated in front of Holbein’s The Ambassadors. First, a man told us what to look for in the painting (including the secret of the skull!). Then a woman passed out boards, paper, and pencils (but no erasers). She told us to look for the shapes in the painting, to map out the visible circles on our paper. Only after that, should we try to add detail and shading to specific images. The goal, she said, was to look. Mapping out the shapes first would help us see the painting in a new way. She’s absolutely right; I never would have thought to look for circles in that painting, but it worked!

Every piece deserves its own quiet Slow Art experience. I can’t crowd them all in here and do them justice. But they have all enriched me, changed me, made me this slightly different Barbara in my Third Third, and I am grateful.

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.

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?

Unglued and Unstuck -- Take 2

I’m going to London. For a month. Solo. I leave in three weeks.

Aieeeeee!

After my month in Manhattan, I decided I’d make that a regular event, but I wanted to add newness to it. What other place could boast enough culture to keep me busy for a month? London!

So I went on VRBO, and an apartment magically appeared. When I checked with friends of mine to see if I’d be near them, they said my neighbors were William and Kate. Yes, I checked the map: I’m across the street from Kensington Palace.

Four years ago, when Sophie was at Oxford for a semester, she and I did the London tourism thing: the Tower of London, the British Museum, Greenwich. So this time, I do the immersion-live-as-a-resident thing. I went online and found a whole bunch of excitements: a play with David Tennant (my Dr. Who, swoon…), Slow Art Day at the National Gallery (“Join a small group in a closed-off room and be guided towards a deeper connection with a painting.”), and the Robots exhibit at the Science Museum with a play Last Supper – of robots! And then, of course, I found things like “16 Incredible Library Bars in London.”

But now it’s 4 a.m., and I’m buzzing because:

• The phone thing. I have an old phone of Tim’s that I had to “unlock.” When I get to London, I have to go into a phone store and get a local number, a plan, and a SIM card. Everyone says this is “easy.”


• I think we must have the right electricity adaptor somewhere in the house.

• I want to catch an author program for Cityread London, and they’re at libraries all over: Camden, Stratford, Westminster, Kingston, Ilford, Bexley, Bromley, Slough, and Reading. And then it hit me: I have absolutely no geographic understanding of London. I can’t tell boonies from next neighborhood over.

So, yes, on one level I know I will conquer all these things, and I will appreciate the adventure. But right now, they’re swimming around in my head. How do I phone the apartment owner to meet me at the apartment if I don’t have a phone?!? At Jamaica Station in New York, I borrow a phone from a stranger when I know which train I’ll be on (since there are no pay phones anymore). Sophie says people will think I’ll steal their phone, and British people will think I’m suspicious. Gene in London says: “if you try to start up a conversation with a stranger you will be assumed to be mentally unwell. One does not DO that in London.” Uh, oh, I DO that all the time!

And then it hit me: my month in New York was like re-entering a culture where I fit in. I could swim in familiar waters. Strangers talked to each other all the time. I knew where Penn Station was, that Battery Park was there, and Central Park there, even without ever having lived there.

So this is a BIGGER adventure.

I don’t recall thinking like this before living in Costa Rica for a summer. Why is that? Because it was a homestay so I had someone to ask? Because I was traveling with littler-girl Sophie and had to be the Mom? Because I knew it was going to be Foreign-with-a-capital-F and took it slowly (not with a calendar already swimming with entries)? Because Central American culture works for me?

Because no one had phones and SIM cards to deal with?!?

These are 4 a.m. thoughts. I have to remember that when I first planned my trip to Manhattan, I called the blog post Unglued and Unstuck. So I’m unsticking and getting unglued again.

Time to go back to bed.

But first: What should I see and do in London? What’s on your list? What discoveries have you made that I shouldn’t miss? (Still relishing the recommendation to visit Macy’s wooden escalator in New York….)