past life as a blast

So I live in Kentucky now, and nearly every day I wake up a little panicked and think "What the hell am I doing in Kentucky?"  Some days I wake up and think I'm in London and then remember that no, I am in Kentucky.  On those days I have a difficult time getting out of bed.   I don't have anything against Kentucky itself.  I'm sure it's a lovely place.  I just don't get to see much of it these days since I have no car and I live in a train yard.  A train yard next to an airport, landlocked and trapped without a car.  Oh, and there have been a series of break-ins and muggings in the neighborhood. Last week a group of people went through the apartment complex, broke in to places, stole car keys and then stole a bunch of cars.  The other day some guys forced their way into someone's house nearby and robbed them.  Yesterday 2 people were mugged in broad daylight next to the campus.

until the spirit new sensation takes hold then you know

I hate the fact that I haven't been posting regularly.  So many things have been happening, and I feel like I have a million excuses to keep me from a blog.  One is school.  I spent most of last week in the library and most of the next couple of weeks will also be in the library.  I have an essay due in less than 2 weeks, and I need to get all of my research done for my dissertation in 3 weeks.

Because I only have 3 weeks left in London.

This makes me want to cry.

I'm just now beginning to realize what an amazing place this is, what a fantastic opportunity it has been for me to be here, the things I have learned that are even now changing who I am and how I see the world, lessons I'll take with me to my PhD program, that I'll take with me throughout my life, I hope.

my favorite person in London

I first met Sara in New York in November, 2008.  She was packing around a sweet potato pie and we saw Daniel Radcliffe naked.  Fast forward to June, 2010.  Again, in New York, but this time randomly on the subway, I found out she was moving to London in the fall and we talked about her research interests.  I envied her, because I had applied to a program in London in April and hadn't heard from them yet. I didn't have hopes of going.  Fast forward to July, 2010: I'm moving to London.

So before coming out here I only met this girl twice, but I liked her.  Not only was she carrying around a sweet potato pie the first time we met, she also climbed onto someone's shoulders for a better view of DR coming out of the stage door after the play, while I held her pie. I don't think we saw him, but the girl made me laugh really hard.  When I came out here I knew no one but Sara, and we had been corresponding a little over our blogs and email, but I didn't expect her to become such an important friend in my life. 

I love Sara.  I really do.  She is an angel.  I mean, come on, look at this face!

She really is an angel though, and I think I opened up to her and told her my whole life story the first time we ever hung out.  She's hilarious, but serious. Silly, but thoughtful.  I've learned that it's ok to argue with her, and she'll still like me even if she yells at me.  When I hang out with her I turn into one of those loud Americans that everyone hates, but I can't help it because she's so funny.  And she's been the best London friend I could have hoped for.  I came here knowing no one and Sara was there the whole time.  I'm leaving tomorrow for a few weeks and while I don't think I'll miss London too much while I'm gone, I already miss Sara. We've had some pretty great adventures, including dancing like mad women at an LCD Soundsystem show, and then there was that whole Brighton/Bath fiasco that ended up still being fun. We've walked all over the place, and last week we met at Primrose Hill and realized that London is really ugly. 

Ugly London, Lovely Sara

She also loves Jaffa Cakes.  In fact, we just finished off a box of Jaffa Cakes right before I took that picture of her on Primrose Hill.  And for that, she has my heart forever. 

Love you Sara! Happy Birthday!! 

I'm stupidly happy, like the words to that song

I'm kind of in love with my life right now, and it seems to just keep getting better.  And even though there are parts that don't seem to be getting any better, I feel like I am getting better.  I feel like making a list of all the great things that are happening.

First, church.  I love church.  I love it.  For the last couple of months I've felt like the only thing going well in my life was church, which has never happened before, and which made all the other crappy things that were happening feel less crappy.  I have two callings, Sunday School Teacher and Volunteer Temple Worker, and they have kind of changed my life. We're studying the New Testament this year, which is my favorite book of scripture, and I love being able to study it closely and teach about it.  I love reading about the life of Christ, the things he taught and did, and I am

the wall

The history geek in me took over my body today and spent three hours tracing the ancient Roman wall of Londinium.  I love the word Londinium. It sounds like I made it up, but I didn't.  That's what the Romans called it.  They came here in 43 AD and stuck around until 400 AD or so, and they didn't even build a wall until around 200 AD.  Some say that they don't really know why the Romans decided that they needed to build a wall.  I think it must have been that they were Romans and Romans need to build massive things.

It was originally 20 feet high and 2 miles in length, and it did end up being useful to raise money since most of the gates were tolled gates.  Most of the wall is gone now, except for little bits, but it didn't get torn down until the 17th and 18th centuries, and a lot of it simply got absorbed into buildings, or used as foundation, and in most spots it's buried 15 feet under the road.  After the blitz in 1940 a lot of the west side of the wall became visible, and all of the awful rebuilding they did in the 1960s (Barbican...ugh) was done around the exposed wall.  I bet they just loved building super modern ugly buildings next to those ancient ruins.  I bet they thought it was a really powerful contrast.  It's kind of funny now that some of those areas seem to be falling themselves into a bit of a ruinous state.

It was a bit tricky to find all the parts of it.  I had to use a walking tour podcast that I didn't really care too much for because it took way too long to do, and a lot of times the guy just read off the plaques that were right in front of me.  But, now I know where to go to find the wall, and I hope I can show other people because it really is a neat thing to see.

Now, ruins trouble me a bit.  I remember when I first saw the Forum in Rome and hating it.  I couldn't see the point a bone yard in a beautiful vibrant living city.  I've since learned that the hot, empty boneyard of the Forum used to be a mosquito infested swamp with some grassy areas where cows lived.  And the horrid bare Colosseum was up until the late 19th century covered in hundreds of plants that weren't found any where else in Italy and had likely been transported there by all of the wild animals they brought from throughout the empire to slaughter.  It used to be a place where poets and lovers would wander and explore and bring picnics.  It's a shame those ruins don't have the same wildness to them anymore.

Another reason why ruins trouble me is because I think I always just took them for granted.  They were there in and of themselves.  I never thought of them actually becoming ruinous, or if I did it was in a romantic sort of decay.  It bothers me when I find out their actual histories.  Rome's Colosseum and Forum became stone quarries, the Parthenon was blown up by accident in the 17th century, the Roman wall in London was fully intact until the 19th century, when they decided to just tear it all down to make room for more buildings.

Although discovering these facts bothers me a little, in reality, I love that cities adapt, get rid of the things they don't need, recycle and reuse building materials.  That's a living city, and I think that's why I found the Forum in Rome so bothersome.  The bone yard, the sepulcher, is out of place there.

I'm glad I went out today to look at this. It is a fun walk, but my favorite part was not actually the wall. I promise to blog about that tomorrow.

i love London: the British Library

My life is changing.  I'm becoming one of those people who spends all day, hours on end, in the library, eagerly and frantically reading and taking notes because there simply is not enough time to learn everything.  I never understood before how people could do it every day.  I only ever did it at the end of terms when final papers were soon due, but never without anything impending.

And yet, here I am in the library, reading page after page without break, because there's something I must uncover, and I'm not sure yet what it is.  There's no time for a break, but I'm at the point where the words I read don't actually go into my brain, so I thought maybe that means it's time I start pouring out some of the extra words so I can start filling it up again.

I had a bit of a crisis this weekend.  I was supposed to go to Oxford to visit a friend, and since last week had been a little awful, I wasn't feeling so great.  The stress was building and then I found out that I might not get all the loan money I need this term and I just snapped.  I started crying in a puddle on the floor and ended up missing my train to Oxford.  It was dumb, and I was very mad at myself.   But, it pushed me to start working on finding a job so I spent the whole day looking.  I applied for 3 jobs on Sunday night, which I was proud of myself for doing, but I haven't heard back from them yet. I desperately need an income, so I'm really hoping something will work out.

Moving on the important part of my post...  I love London.  And I love the British Library.  It's really not the most charming of buildings, especially squatting next to what I like to call the Gothic Monster (St. Pancras train station).

 But I still love it.  I love the big terraced courtyard, and when it gets warmer it will probably be a nice place to read a book in the sunshine.  I also love the inside.  I love all of the natural lighting and the tall ceilings.

It's really a beautiful space.  I couldn't take pictures of the readings rooms, but they're similar.  Large, open, with vaulted ceilings and lots of natural light.  They also have large desk space and big comfy chairs to sit in.  I love the reading rooms.  Here's another view of the main entrance.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but there's a painting on the wall by the entrance that is just the word YES over and over and over again.  I love it.  It's very affirming.  

So this is where I've been spending most of my time lately.  One of the other perks is that it is literally a 2 minute walk from where I live, so I can come home for lunch very easily, and it's only 4 train stops from where I plan on living in the summer.  I'm so glad I get to spend so much time in this building.  I love it.  

living with a painting, day one

I was thinking the other day about how much I hate museums. I think I hate going to museums the same way I hate reading books: I get overwhelmed by the content and the time it takes for me to get through it all.  I hate that you have to "get through it all" at a museum, like there's a time limit.  You have to see everything in a couple of hours.  I personally can't be in a museum for longer than a couple of hours. I go mad and get angry and want to run away.  There's just too much stuff.  I hate how I can only give each painting a quick glance or, at most, five or seven minutes contemplating its lines and colors and textures and context and subject so superficially that I might as well not even look at it.  I forget it the moment I leave, unless I find a postcard of it in the gift shop, but the postcard is merely a reminder of its existence, a reminder that will probably find its way to the bottom of a pile of postcards, or tacked to a wall with fifty other reminders.

A museum is no way to view art.  Art should be lived with. How can I possibly understand a piece of art if I only glance at it, if it's not there with me to return to when I'm not thinking of anything in particular? It's funny how I thought of this and then when I started reading a book by Stephen Fry called The Ode Less Traveled about writing poetry, he says: Poems, "as with a good painting are not there to be greedily taken in at once, they are to be lived and endlessly revisited. The eye can go back and back and back, investigating new corners, new incidents and the new shapes that seem to emerge."  Clearly I need to live with a painting.

I've had this idea before but have never taken the time to see it through.  So I decided now was the perfect opportunity.  I would go to a local museum, find a painting and visit it every day for at least a week. I would spend at least an hour in its presence, not necessarily staring at it for an hour--I would write, listen to music, read, and the moments when I pause or get distracted I would look at the painting, and allow my eye to slip across it, lingering on a particularly lovely line or shading, sweeping through its figures and focusing on a bit of color I hadn't seen before.  This is how I want to experience art, not rushing through a museum so that I can say I've seen it all.

So today I went to the Tate Britain to meet my painting.  My criteria for choosing a painting were pretty arbitrary: 1) it had to be something I'd consider putting on my wall at home, a painting I wouldn't object living with, and 2) there had to be a soft seat near by.  That's all.  There were some early 20th century paintings I quite liked but not a soft chair in the room, so I moved on to another room  Finally I chose this painting:

It's called Theseus and the Minotaure (Interior at Minos) by Keith Vaughan finished in 1950.  I don't particularly love the painting, but that's one of the reasons I chose it.  It's like when you meet someone at school or church, and you get along fine but they're not your favorite person, and then you get to know them and sometimes you become pretty good friends, or at least you understand them better and can appreciate who they are.  That's kind of what I'm hoping will come of this experience.  

One interesting thing I noticed about the painting is that I counted 78 crescents in it.  That's a lot of crescents. That's pretty much what I got from it today, but I have a whole week to acquaint myself with it and think more about it.  Today was just the initial meeting.  I think this is going to be a fun experience. 

Go and dance yourself clean

It's been a slightly eventful week. I didn't have any classes so it was technically a vacation week and I managed to get some fun stuff worked in there. On Wednesday my Only London Friend (or OLF) and I went to see LCD Soundsystem. It actually turned into quite a little adventure, and it was my first time out of my Zone on the Tube (and I did it wrong so it cost me like 8 pounds in fees). OLF had class until 6 and the show started at 7 and so I met up with her at her school, then we got some delicious Chinese take out (I got the roasted duck on rice, of course) and headed to Crouch End and the Alexandra Palace. When we got there, there was seriously a mile long queue. I have never seen a line so long in my life. I decided to walk to the front to see if I could find a different line for picking up my tickets and I walked and walked and walked, leaving poor OLF behind. (Ha, ok, I'm sorry Sara, if you're reading this, I'll stop calling you OLF. I just thought it was really funny. It's probably not.) Anyway, FINALLY we got in, right in the middle of Hot Chip's set. Sara and I immediately started dancing and didn't stop until the end of LCD Soundsystem's set, but we decided to leave before the encores since there were probably 20,000 people there and we wanted to make sure we got on the bus before everyone else decided to go. I figured since this was my third time seeing them that I'd live, and I did.

I really loved it and I will see them again if I ever get the chance. I love how much fun everyone has at their shows and how much you can dance and totally lose yourself. I love how their songs have a proper amount of tension leading up to a fantastic moment of release. It's euphoric, and I'm totally addicted. I think I liked this show better than the one in New York. They played all my favorite songs, and I was in GREAT company (instead of totally alone like the NY show). Sara seriously is the funnest person.

Also, I have a total crush on this guy. He is adorable in concert.

So the next day on Thursday I went to see a taping of the Graham Norton Show. It was supposed to be the highlight of my life and it turned out to be rather meh. No one makes me laugh like Graham Norton, and so even though the guests sucked, I thought I'd still have fun. I just found out that Stephen Fry and Bette Midler will be on next weeks show and it broke my heart. I LOVE Stephen Fry like no one else. Instead I got stuck with Colin Ferrall (who told nothing but the most boring stories. He has no personality at all), Daniel Radcliffe (who was late and then really annoying, and just ugh) and then a comedian I've never heard of and then Rihanna, who was cute and everything, but I just genuinely don't care about her music. Also I had to stand outside in the freezing wind, and those who keep up with my Twitter area already familiar with the fact that I was not wearing the proper clothing for such an event. It was really really horrible. It hasn't been that cold or windy in London since I've been here. I honestly don't know if it was worth it.

Anyway, on my way to the show I saw this poster in the train station. It made me laugh, because it obviously does not work.

I don't think it does a very effective job of pushing polite behaviour because the Tube is still full of fools who refuse to budge from their convenient spot right next to the door and impede anyone from coming in or out of the train. In New York I seriously got yelled at for doing that one day when I wasn't paying attention. The poster is just too polite, and I think this one will work much better.

Fortunately at the Graham Norton show I was able to fight my way to the front of what had been a very long queue and had turned into a throng of people rushing the door, and I got the best of the worst seats!

HA! The suckers I had to push over to get to the door didn't get to be on the telly at all, but I DID!

So, since Wednesday and Thursday were exhausting I decided to stay in and work on my paper on Friday, and it didn't turn out well. Friday will be one of those days to forget forever.

Moving on, today I took my FIRST real train ride out of the city! I went with my ward to the London Temple. We took the train from Victoria Station to Lingfield and then a short taxi from the station to the temple. I mention this because it was also my FIRST time in a British taxi! And the first time ever driving on the wrong side of the road, and yes, it is the wrong side. Seriously, driving on the left side is totally counterintuitive, and it's the one cultural difference I'm having a hard time getting past, especially since I've almost got hit crossing the street several times because of it.

Anyway, the temple was lovely and I got to talk to more people from my ward, and hopefully made a couple of friends. I enjoyed myself immensely. Here's a picture of me and Sara in front of the temple. We stood a bit too far from the camera, so you can't really see us well, but that's ok because I didn't get a chance to shower this morning and was a bit of a mess.

And that's it for my week off of school! I start back up again on Tuesday and I'll be killing myself trying to get this paper done. I think i might have made some headway in brainstorming with my sister for a bit, but we'll see!

Jasie's Guide to Navigating Bureaucracy in the UK

Dear Reader,

I was going to impart my wisdom on how to do Banking in the UK, but I realized that these steps will work for basically anything you need to do in order to survive as a student. Receiving loans, applying for privileges to read at the library (yes you have to apply for that), registering for classes, enrolling (which I think is different from registering), opening bank accounts, closing bank accounts, doing any kind of banking at all, etc, etc. I hope if you find yourself trying to live in London these tips may come in handy:

1. Banks and other institutions open at an obscenely late time in the day, so don't attempt any type of bureaucratic adventuring before work or an early class. Wait for a day off, go ahead and sleep in, grab your umbrella and head out (it's always raining on days you need to get forms signed).
2. Queue up! Queuing (or standing in a line) and drinking are the national past-times here, and so it is expected that you quietly take your place in the queue and not bother the 5 nice people who are working hard or chatting at their open stations. They're not open, please join the queue.
3. Make an appointment to come back later. Of course, after the queue you're not likely to actually talk to anyone who can help you, but you might talk to someone who can write your name down so that you can come back later and join the lunchtime queue.
4. You'll never have the right documents, so bring everything. Load up that satchel with every proof you have of your existence. Did the bank send you a letter to your house and so will obviously not demand that you bring a some proof of residence (like a letter from a bank to your house)? No chance! Make sure you bring an additional 5 letters, plus your passport, plus the proof of your address at home, plus your passport, plus your birth certificate, and driving license (fun fact! they don't call it a drivers license here and will likely correct you if you do).
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4, ad infinitum. Like I said in the last step, you're not likely to have the right documents on the first try, or even the second or third. But keep trying! That's how the British developed their plucky spirits and won two world wars.

a message in a bottle

I told my one friend in London last week that I wouldn't blog anymore, that blogging was just an exercise in vanity. Why would anyone want to read my blog? and yet, what's the point of blogging if no one is reading it? Well, I guess I don't know the answers to those questions. I don't think many do read it, and I wouldn't know why if they did. But perhaps it is healthy to write even for a pretend audience, especially if I intend to write academically for the rest of my life, which I do.

That pretend audience may have noticed that I haven't been uploading photos every day like I said I would. This is because uploading photos has been taking up too much data and I have a limited amount allocated to me on the school network, which sucks. I went over last week and they punished me by reconnecting me with a 1999 modem speed connection for a week, so I learned my lesson.

The whole month of October everything has been green, and now things are finally starting to change. The weather has basically been the same every day since I got here. Temperature from 50 to 60 degrees, cloudy, a little rainy and really lovely bouts of sunshine. It's so humid that I sweat all the time no matter what and my hair is a big frizzy mess. I don't even know what to do with it.

I've had quite the time getting adjusted. Well, most things haven't been a problem, but the libraries here drive me crazy. I've had to shift my whole style of research, and research I have been doing, or trying to anyway. I'm applying for a PhD Studentship at the Open University and the British Library and I've been freaking out about it for a week. I'm in a fairly good mood now because I think it is mostly done and I just have to print the proposal, the cover letter and writing example out and send it in tomorrow. I have been struggling though, thinking and feeling like i know nothing and have nothing to say, and then magically it all came together this afternoon while I was in class. I was lucky actually because we were talking about argument and we had to try to present an argument to a partner, and since this is what i've been working on all week I attempted to explain to him what my argument is. Here I realized I never had an argument, and that is probably why I've been struggling so much this week. So talking about it was helpful and I finally formulated something and then finished up my proposal. It feels good.

I like my classes. The professors are wonderful. One them is someone whose work I was already familiar with and his classes are just a delight. He is a delightful and kind person and I really must go and talk to him in office hours sometime because I'd like him to be my friend. I have to write a paper soon for one of my classes and of course everything we talk about makes me think of horror movies. So I'm writing about coldness in films like the Shining and Dead Snow which create a world outside of time and space whereupon the horror can be acted out. It should be fun.

I'm skipping out on a student led discussion class thing because the last time i went the instructor did nothing but confuse me more about philosophy. It's hard enough to get Kant and Hegel, and when the person trying to teach you is just as confused as you are it's useless. So I've decided tonight to stay in, study German and finish up this application. I've been pretty good with my German studying. I do an hour a day every day, and I'm thinking of pushing it to 2 hours.

any day now...

I was hoping to wake up this morning to an email informing me that my visa has been approved and is on its way to my house. Alas it wasn't there and my stress level increased by about four points. It's making me think about patience. What the heck is patience anyway? Am I waiting patiently when I know I can do nothing and so I try to distract myself while my stomach grows increasingly queasy and I want to chew off my own hand? Is patience the ability to pretend that you are not waiting for something or that someone is not actually driving you crazy? Is it an innate internal stability and calmness when everything around you is completely out of your control? A couple of weeks ago when I was waiting for the last important document I needed before I could apply for the visa I made myself sick, imagining all the things that could have gone wrong and what I could possibly do to fix it, and it was so bad that when I did get the letter I didn't actually feel any better and a capillary burst in my eye making it blood red for two weeks. This time around the waiting is far worse and I'm wondering what will burst.

Maybe I just need to be more positive. I will get the visa, I will get to London. I might miss the first week of school, all of the orientation meetings and the graduate party in the Tate Modern, but that can be ok. I'll just have to let them know that I'm coming a little late because of the visa issue. Worse things could happen.

On another positive note, I got an amazing new little toy. This year has been the year for gadgets for me. I got an ipod and a new little computer and now my friends chipped in to get me a kindle for a going away present. I love it. I think it's the best thing that has ever happened to books. I already have 200 books on there and it still only weighs a few ounces! I can do searches, I can make bookmarks and notes and now I have books that I thought about reading but never wanted to buy or try to find at the library. It also works well for my scattered brain to switch from book to book without having to pack 3 or 4 around with me all the time. I might even start reading for fun.

Ok, so no worries. Everything is going to work out fine. I will get there, and it will be soon.