Thursday, October 24, 2002

 

Gah!

Wow. Due to a brilliant html error on my part, I messed up that last post and CAN NEVER FIX IT. EVER. (Please scroll down to see how it started.) Sigh. Anyhow, I just went on to say:

• I miss Reboot.
  
• I miss Buffy, and if someone can't guarantee me access to tapes containing this seasons episodes when I get back, I just want to know what's going on because I can't handle that kind of suspense.
  
• I called Michael an hour or so ago and got to talk to him for approximately 39.7 seconds because my phone kept cutting out due to a low battery. Why do these things happen now, when I just bought a new voucher with the specific purpose of calling Michael and Allyson and LindZ (whose number I think I've also been dialing wrong all this time)? I have been waiting all day for it to be the right time to try to call people. Grr. I think I will go home after this, charge my battery, and try again.
  
• A creepy security guard just came in to scope the computer lab out, so if I suddenly cut this short, that's why.
  

Hmm. What else can I tell you about? Oh yes, I bought a coat today for £4. Yes, I do rule. Although that was negated by my spending £26 on photo developing. Sigh. But that's behind me now. Looking at the pictures I got developed made me all melty and got me missing Michael and Tommy and Jalie and my kitties (those being the key players in the first roll).

Oh, also, among the rolls was a Mystery Roll™, which I figured wouldn't even be pictures I'd taken, but would nevertheless prove interesting. Turns out it was a roll of film from FIVE YEARS AGO. I'm not kidding, I am fifteen years old in these pictures. It's from when mum and I went to Austin to meet the relatives and take care of the legal business with Tia Luisa! Mum! Isn't that fabulous? They turned out perfectly fine, too, you can't tell the film just sat around for five years. Anyhow, I'll mail you the doubles soon.

Oh my God. I am really boring. Um...never fear, I'm sure Wales will spawn exciting tales. Yes. I'm going to pretend I didn't rhyme just then.
posted by humanbecoming 7:30 PM

 

Oh yeah, maybe I should let my friends and family know that I haven't *really* sunk into a clinical depression...

Yes. Thank you all very much for your encouraging comments on my last post. I meant to post almost immediately after, because just writing all that down made me feel better, but things were all busy and whatnot and I...didn't. But I love you all, truly. Thanks for the support. :)

In other news, I'm going to Wales tomorrow. Woo! The 'Land of the Red Dragon,' as it were. I'm excited, and shall be coming back on Sunday. I don't know whether or not I'll have internet access while there, but I'm assuming not. Anyway, I'll let you all know on Sunday how that went.

In other other news, I've just been re-reading old Over-Analysis Theatre pages from posted by humanbecoming 7:27 PM

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

 

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit

I read once that 'London is a city full of ghosts.' It's true. It is a dark and strange city, especially to one coming from any part of the New World - needless to say the heart of the midwest. The city is vast and labyrinthine and impossibly old. It smells of man - of factories and trains, of street vendors and their various wares - but underneath is the musty smell of decay; hundreds of years of cruelty and suffering, and a great and enduring sadness.

It is a city of umbrellas, too. Everyone walks along, protected and even insulated from each other. It is not just a city where you look up, see something unpleasant and look the other way. Here in London, you simply never look up at all.

The other day I went to Covent Garden to watch the street performers there. They've brought me encouragement in the past, renewing my love for my craft and inspiring me to stick with it. When I got there this time, however, I was met with an unfriendly stillness. The tube station locked shut behind me, and the mimes were all standing heavily in the street, counting their money. I watched my favourite one go into a shop to buy a cup of coffee. Clouds above threatened to burst. The tourists milled about with dull, glazed eyes, and the locals sighed at their feet as they pressed on.

There are cameras everywhere. Besides the ones they try to hide (but which you'll see, if you're observant) are the ones in plain view, with signs notifying you about them, and the number of these is depressing enough. So everyone here is always lonely but never alone. Watched by mechanical eyes - it's easy to understand where Orwell's '1984' came from

On a tour of London the other night we went beneath innocent pubs to see ancient holding cells beneath; we stood where thousands of 'debtors' and 'thieves' in centuries past waited to die. We stood on the spot where William Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered (there's a plaque on the side of a large building to mark the spot). We stood above an old pit where 'Bloody Mary' had 300 Catholic priests burned alive. It is now a car park.

How does life go on in a city as old as this? They have simply built upon the decay of the past. They have neither destroyed it nor attempted to preserve it, with the exception of tourist traps like the Clink and the London Dungeon - and I suppose one might also cite the Tower as an example, but it's still used for things such as housing the crown jewels. But all the old depressing ruins are still there. The fact that those cells just sit down there under the pubs (some being used for storage space but most simply rotting away) absolutely blows my mind. In the begging cells you can still stick your hand out through a hole into the street, which used to be a debtor's only way to get money to buy his freedom - and almost guaranteed the loss of some fingers. The walls of these cells are mildewey, the floor filthy, and still feel very much like a functional prison.

And the whole Whitechapel area, too, has mostly the same buildings that were there in Jack the Ripper's day. New signs adorn the old brick and stone, of course, and there's a great many more street lamps in addition to the old ones (and all being lit now by modern means), but the geography is basically the same, as are the cobbled streets.

Taking all this into account, how could London not be 'a city full of ghosts?' They live in the stone and craggy streets, they press their faces to the glass of old pubs, they perch solemnly atop Eros in Picadilly Circus, once a meeting point for forbidden lovers' trysts and now the place junkies go to meet their dealers.

I'm so depressed.
posted by humanbecoming 12:42 PM