Home, and the protean nature of memory

          So it's been over a month that I've been home now.
          I didn't get the reverse culture shock that I was expecting - I was so convinced that I was going to be snappish and irritable at everyone that I must have overcompensated or something; things were smooth sailing. It wasn't as alien being home as I thought it would be, either. I walked into my room and felt merely comfort. I perused the kitchen pantry and felt no signs of shock or surprise - just the deep satisfaction at having so many varieties of foodstuffs at my disposal. Sitting down at my piano was like coming home all over again. My parents were merely pleased and happy, not smothering and imprisoning. My mom made my favorite hot dish.
          All this is good.
          But it makes me feel a little ... traitorous? You know. It's as though returning to Stateside life so easily indicates that London hadn't meant anything to me.
          I've noticed that I've started to give stock answers to people's questions. "How was London?" "Fantastic." I list places and shows I saw, talk about High Street Kensington, about New Cross and Chick Chicken. And these are all true. They were real experiences, ones I enjoyed. But I find myself editing. Days of sullen grey rain are glossed into a single, vague sentence: "It rained a lot." I don't mention impromptu trips to the Hobgoblin, or Sainsbury's excursions, or wandering around Covent Garden just for the hell of it. The experiences I relate are the ones that were planned and expected. I mean, I understand that corners have to be cut. Details have to be trimmed. But I'm finding that, by only telling overarching stories about my experiences, I'm only left with overarching memories.

          I miss the easy and thoughtless camaraderie Brittany, Nick, Gonzo and I had. The question "Are you hanging out with us tonight?" was met with a scoff - why bother asking when the answer is always yes, obviously, of course, what do you mean am I hanging out with you tonight, I mean really?
          I'm not going to spend my time complaining about Iowa or Illinois. Because, really, I love both my homes. But one advantage of only having three friends is that you never have to work at or worry about being social. It's not a task - it's an instinct.
          So. Being home. I'm settling into classes here at Coe. It's weird having a class meet twice or thrice a week - I have so little free time. I did like the once a week approach Goldsmiths had. However, I guess there's a shift in the balance of how you spend that extra time. Learning in the States is far more professor-directed. You're pretty much told what to get out of the lectures and readings. At Goldsmiths, though, most of what you get out of those things are the observations and analyses you draw yourself. I don't really prefer one to the other, I guess; it's not as though I need a lot of time between classes to explore Cedar Rapids, and I like the dynamic between students and professors when the professor is not just a lecturer, but an involved and interactive tutor.

          This entry is sounding a lot more negative than I'd intended.
          I find that, try as I might, I'm turning into one of those irritating people who spends all her time reminiscing about London. It's not that I'm ungrateful or disinterested in what's going on here. It's not that I dislike the States, or Coe, or Chicago - quite the reverse, actually. I mean, I just spent a fantastic weekend in Chicago with my friends (it was their joint 20th birthday party). But everything reminds me of something I did there.


          Uplifting, happy reflection: London was good. It was good for me. I loved the city, I loved the people I met and the friends I made. I miss pubs (a sub-culture in and of themselves). It was good having this intricate city, ready and easy to be explored (thank God for the Tube), with its free museums and varied restaurants and wide sidewalks.
          I did gain more independence. I picked up some of that urbane self-assurance. I learned that life overseas is as flawed and upsetting as it is at home - a bald and obvious revelation, but one that took a while to sink in - but it's also no more flawed and upsetting than home. You have to deal with iniquities. And now I know how to do that in a place where they drive on the wrong side of the road.
          I think I expected London to change me. I expected to undergo some inexorable, natural transformation, as though the different air and different soil would act as catalysts, sparking a rewiring of synapses and thought patterns. I guess it's done that, but the change was voluntary, and began internally.

          In all, I would go back in a heartbeat. I don't know if I could live there for good - a year, maybe - but I could spend another three months. I miss walking along the Thames, the picturesque squalor of New Cross, the little flower seller next to the Hobgoblin, Chris ("Do you have six pounds? No? Then tell me, do you have ninety P?"), even getting up at four a.m. to wait in line for cheap tickets to shows. I even miss the days of boredom and homesickness and frustration. It was real.
          I never had many romantic visions of London. I didn't know what to expect. I'm glad now that I've been there, that I have the feel of it under my feet, under my skin.
          It's another place I've put down roots.
          I hope it's not going to be a one time deal. I hope I make it back, see how it's changed and I've changed. But even if it remains just this isolated experience - it was a good one.

And in the end ...

          I wrote and mailed fourteen postcards today.
          The last day in London. Better now than never, I guess. Also, the post office had no 54p stamps, so there were three stamps per card (48, 5, and 1p). And they were the lick kind - no sticker stamps here. Brittany helped affix them to the postcards.
          Okay, so it was a little ridiculous.

          Today was spent in Central London, mostly wandering around Charing Cross Road investigating second-hand bookstores. I had a chicken and veg pasty from the Cornwall Pasty Co. (Award Winning!). It was quite delicious.
          I've been avoiding thinking things like "This is the last time I'll pass that rubbish bin" etc. For one, I don't actually feel sad about things like that. For another, empirically, it's woefully sentimental. I'm all for sentiment, but not over mundane things like that. Now, missing Chick Chicken and Doner Kebabs (which is actually called The Kebab House or something along those lines) will be entirely valid.
          It's weird. I wish I felt like it was ending. I wish I felt some twinge of urgency - remember this! imprint these images on your brain! savor these sensations! - but it seems like any other day, and all I really feel is tiredness, to my bones.

          So now, it's time to pack. I've been putting it off, but it's finally unavoidable. I just need to get into the mindset.
          Put on some turbo-happy music to counteract the effects of dismantling my life here, eat a few truffles, and go.


          Oh, on a side note, the public toilet outside my dorm caught fire this morning. No one was in it. There was a large fire truck parked next to it as it smoked. It was fantastically absurd.

          That's all, my darlings. This is my last post from London. Expect one or two more, wrapping up this segment of life, looking at it as a whole, nostalgic and fuzzy. For now, it's too close, too immediate, for me to step back and make grand statements about it.
          I wish that it weren't over.

Parties and Pi

          My ears are ringing.
          Tonight, we had our Christmas partay (also known as Brittany, Gonzo, and I dressing up and Nick only conceding to wear a tie), during which we listened to Christmas music and ate food.
          We went to Club Sandwich (Goldsmiths' weekly disco). Well, Gonzo and Brittany twisted my arm into going. I didn't stay for long, but it was fun. Hits such as "Summer Lovin'" and "Say My Name" were played. It was pleasantly un-crowded and un-sticky, for the most part.

          Three days. Well. Two real days, and then I'm taking off on Saturday morn, at seven of the ay-emm. Then it's Heathrow and a long flight, and hello Chicago. It's still surreal.
          I feel like I'll be going home for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then I'll be coming back. I know that once I board the plane, I'm going to nonetheless feel comfortable knowing I'll see Brittany in a few hours, that I'll hang out with Nick and Gonzo later that evening.
          But it isn't true.
          I know I've been harping on about it for the past few posts. But I can't help it. Ah! Shake it off. I'm spoiling the moment, I know.

          In other news, I've seen four plays in the last six days. Here's how it goes.
                  Friday: The Seagull.
                  Saturday: King Lear.
                  Monday: Othello.
                  Tuesday: Much Ado About Nothing.
                  And Thursday will be: Stephen Fry's Cinderella.

          The Seagull and King Lear both starred Ian McKellen, and Othello's headliner was Ewan McGregor. They were astounding productions, all. Excellent. Much Ado was much needed after all those tragedies, in which, as Nick put it, "everyone dies and most of them don't deserve it." For all of them, we got up early to stand in line for the day tickets. Mostly we arrived around 6:30am and waited around until 10:00 when the tickets went up. For Othello, we took the 4:57 night bus and arrived at half five. We were second in line. But we got three of the ten seats. Day seats (tickets sold the morning of the performance) are heavily reduced in cost and hugely popular, by the way.
          The moral of the story is: getting up super early for good tickets is worth it, but wear as many layers as possible. We ended up bringing laptops to watch movies during the wait. Most excellent.

          On Sunday, Brittany, Nick, and I went on a tour to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath. It was cold and rainy, but still pretty fun. Our tour guide's name was Tony, and he had the best jacket ever - stripes of green, purple, and orange, but from any distance greater than one foot, it looked like a normal, sedate, business-like grey. Simply amazing.
          I'd been to Windsor before, but never inside. I can't get over the sheer opulence of the place. I mean, I know it's the Queen's preferred residence, but really. I mean, who needs twenty complete sets of hand-painted china? What is the point of living somewhere where you actually only live in a fraction (where the top number is one and the bottom number is considerably larger) of it? It was ... pretty, in an ostentatious sort of way. But I can't get over the blatant wastefulness of it. Aren't we past that? The whole, look how rich I am, I can afford to paper my walls with damask silk, nyer nyer nyer.
          I think it's clear that I'm cut out for the working class.
          Stonehenge was ... a semicircular pile or large rocks. No, it was cool, really. It would have been nice to have been able to explore the stones, but we were kept to the footpaths around it - no touching. The rain let up at the point, but it was incredibly windy on that flat field. Stonehenge is impressive, to be sure, but it's an image I was so acquainted with that it really wasn't much more exciting than seeing a picture of it in a textbook. I'll have to come back and beg them to let me stand in the middle of the stones on Midsummer morning, to watch the sun rise over the heelstone.
          In Bath, we saw, surprise surprise, the ruins of a Roman bath. It's spring-fed, and hot. There's still water in them, and you can see the water bubbling up all green and murky from the original spring.

          So. In the two days I have left, I'm going to see a play, shopping for Christmas gifts, and packing. Oh, man. Packing. That'll be fun. And by fun I mean really depressing.
          But, I guess it has an allure. It's sort of like packing a backpack - there's a joy in it. Can I fit everything? It's a science. You know, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. It's kind of mindless, but in a soothing way.
          I'm gonna need soothing.
          So these days are winding up. I'd say I can't believe it's gone by so quickly, but I can. Twelve weeks. That's nothing. So much has happened, and yet I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of London. Although, Chick Chicken is a delight few experience, I think.
          I know that one of my hopes in coming here, without Coe or the ACM, has been accomplished. I'm more independent than I was. Wandering around London by myself? Pish. No problem. Navigating the Tube on my own? Don't make me laugh. So. Be more independent? Check that one off the list.

          And now: gratuitous Stonehenge pictures.

And the end is now in sight

          And it's still breaking my heart.
          But now, with the end of essays and portfolios also in sight, we've been gearing up for a kickin' last week in London. On the agenda: several plays (as in, four in five days), a farewell Christmas party (formal dress encouraged), one last meal at the Princess Victoria (which was our first London pub).
          Tonight, Nick, Brittany, and I listened to Bing Crosby (and smatterings of the Anderson Sisters and one sad and lonely Frank Sinatra) sing Christmas carols while we cut out snowflakes and hung them from Brittany's ceiling.




(photos by Brittany Jackson and Gonzalo Tuesta)
          It's quite pretty, actually. We're trying not to think about the moment when we'll have to take them down. Putting away Christmas decorations is surprisingly disheartening.
          Tomorrow: I may or may not get up at 5.45am in order to get tickets for a play ... Also printing out and turning in my Music as a Communcation and Creative Practice essay (monstrous relief), and booking tickets for a tour of Bath and Stonehenge for this Sunday. Excellent, well.

          An incomplete list of (intangible) things to bring home:
          - The Double Jinx
          - "Exce," "hip hip," "obvs"
          - The awkward noise, the surly duck noise

          It's probably apparent from the disordered and disjointed nature of this post that I'm rather tired. I hope you'll forgive me. Making paper snowflakes for two hours really takes it outta a girl.


          Oh, also to do this week: actually send you folks postcards/letters. It'll happen. Last chance, right?
          In the meantime, catch a few snowflakes (the kind that melt) and drink some hot chocolate for me, yeah? Wrap a few presents with the most ostentatious paper you can find. Actually kiss somebody under the mistletoe. Disguise a good gift as socks (not the other way around). Sing a few carols in public. Hang up as many lights as your circuit breaker can handle.
          I'm in love with Christmastime.

Inevitabilities

          It's already getting to be time to start thinking about Coe and home in practical terms. I have to start thinking about where I'm going to live, if I'll have a single or a double. Hours I want to work in the Writing Center. I've been offered a job teaching ballet to first graders in Cedar Rapids. I don't know if I'm going to take it - it's been so long since I've been immersed in that world. Even the language has gotten away from me. Plie. Jete. Pirouette. Arabesque. Tourjette. Glissade. Words that sound like cream puffs and expensive pastries. It's the first time I've been confronted with anything that even remotely resembles real life. It's a reminder of things I'll have to think about when I get back, when I return from this term abroad.
          I have to think about things I'm going to do when I get home. It's weird picturing myself moving through my house, actually sitting at the piano bench with it's rough, waffle-weave upholstery. Actually eating at a table. Actually lying in my bed with the mobile on my ceiling spinning slowly overhead.
          I'm glad to be coming home for the Christmas season. If I'd have come back in time for summer, I think I couldn't do it. I think it would be too hard to leave behind the friends I've made, to leave the city, to sink back into a strangely unfamiliar life. But coming home for Christmas, to crass commercialism, to a treeful of ornaments, to Bing Crosby on the radio, to hellish Christmas shopping, I have something comfortable and familiar and immediately nostalgic to wrap myself in. Christmas doesn't change much from year to year. And there will be the seventh annual Caroling for Cans, the traditional New Year's Eve party, to look forward to.


          My friends and I went ice skating at Somerset House. It'd been raining, and was raining when we were walking to Somerset House, actually. But once we got there, even though it was still dark and cloudy, it had let up. It was only 4:00, but it was so dark that it felt like 7:00 - the sun sets at 3:30 around here. The ice was really slick because of the rain, and I fell down twice, once within two seconds of getting on the ice. Really graceful, I know. I got the hang of it again pretty quickly, though the lights around the rink kept changing color. It was very pretty, but a little disconcerting - sometimes the ice was lit by plain white lights, and then everything would go rosy, then purple, and then blue. I was fine except when the lights were blue - it made me feel like I was going to fall over.          It was all very picturesque and lovely, string lights shining and a large tree decked out in glittering snowflakes and garlands. There were one or two guys there who kept zooming around, clearly showing off, as though being a jerk was a good way to get a girl or something. Other than that, it was nice seeing people slowly gliding along, and the few small, almost obnoxious kids who kept falling over. I want to go ice skating when I get home. It's so much fun! But it has to be outdoors - indoor rinks like Rinkside just don't cut it. You've got to be cold and red-cheeked and damp and bruised all over and ready for hot chocolate when you're done skating, otherwise you've missed something.(photos by Brittany Jackson)

          Things around here are wrapping up, too. My essays are nearing completion, responsibilities are lifting one by one, while yet others of another breed are descending. I'm suddenly having to think about what I'm going to leave behind, about fitting things into suitcases, figuring out when to leave for Heathrow. It's disheartening. I have two weeks left. It's like a whisper that won't stop. We have two weeks left. Two weeks.
          It's a little heartbreaking. It's ridiculous. The friends I've made here - it's weird when I don't see them for more than a day. I can get lonely if I'm online and they aren't, even though they're a hallway or courtyard away.
          I've spent basically every day of the last three months with them, with Brittany and Nick and Gonzo. It'll be a really strange gap in my life to not have them constantly around - I still can't really get my head around it, the realization that I won't just walk next door to watch a movie with the three of them every night. That we won't walk to the New Cross Gate station, or Chick Chicken, or go for chips with burger sauce again. We won't squash onto a crowded train at the Canada Water station or dash up an elevator at Waterloo. I know I'm being sentimental. But you can't paint someone's face green, you can't have a slumber party with dark chocolate and McVities, you can't dash screeching and laughing breathlessly through torrential rain, without letting yourself become attached. There have been picnics, and parks, and impromptu photoshoots. We've gotten up before dawn to try for theatre tickets, laughed far into the night together, spent the hours between times exploring the city, seeing shows, cooking and eating together. It's started to feel normal. It's starting to feel like this is how it goes.

          I'm trying to console myself with things I'll have to look forward to at home. Christmas and New Year's, as mentioned above. Friends. Family. Playing Scrabble or putting together a puzzle by the light of the Christmas tree. Borders. Getting my license (which I'm resolved to do - enough is enough). Having a fully stocked kitchen at my disposal. Having my sewing machine. My piano. My guitar. Apple cider. And eggnog. I'm really looking forward to eggnog. Oooh, and ice cubes, in vast amounts, readily available. I missed ice. I'll be visiting Jenna, and Heather might come to visit me. Going to Panera with Marie. Working out at Curves. Snow. Winter in the Midwest. All good, all things I'm excited for, all things that I've missed.

          So why, then, this weight in the middle of my ribcage? It's like there's salt water in the bottom of my lungs.

          So savor the time left. I keep shaking my head, throwing my hair out of my eyes. Don't sully today with inevitabilities. The sun is out. There's time yet. Make the most of what you've got.

Food

          Sorry about the long silence. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

          Meghan and Becky arrived one fine Saturday, and I met them at Heathrow in the wee hours of the morn. It was wonderful having them here, and also a little strange. London along with bits of home all at once.
          What did we do? There was such a lot packed into that week. Well, when I took them on their very first ride on the Tube, they thought the train was insulting them as it said, "This train is for Cockfosters."  We went to Abbey Road, museums (the Natural History Museum for the third time for me, and it was still just as exciting), shows, Primark, and just wandered around. They also saw the touristy stuff - Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London (where Becky got to see where lots of people were killed). They went on a Jack the Ripper tour, and we saw the Sherlock Holmes museum.

          And, of course, there was Thanksgiving. Which was ... a triumphant success!  We made a turkey. Well, actually, we couldn't find a whole turkey, so we bought turkey breast (still on the bones) and two turkey legs, and made that instead. It still looked like a whole turkey.
          The night before, we'd ripped up two loafs of bread (the real stuff, quality french bread with a golden crust) and dried it out. On Thanksgiving, we sauteed (according to Meghan's dad's instructions) an onion, some garlic, and some celery, mixed it up with the dry bread, sprinkled on some rosemary, and doused it in butter. We hid it under the turkey breast, as there wasn't really an inside into which to stuff it.
          Nicholas and I constructed a roasting pan out of ridiculous amounts of tin foil. The turkey bits were then marinated in oil, butter, salt, and pepper. We stuck it in the oven and drenched it with butter every fifteen minutes.
          Meghan made her famous truffles (and we had dark chocolate to spare ... never a bad thing), which we attacked.

          We had a magnificent spread. Two kinds of sparkling juice (including white grape with pomegranate and rose), crescent rolls (made by Brittany), sweet potato fries (made by Nicholas), steamed green beans, real mashed potatoes, a salad (made of not-iceberg lettuce), turkey and stuffing of course (which were ridiculously tasty and made us feel proud and capable), and even cranberry sauce.
          Luke (one of Brittany's English flatmates) joined us for dinner. It was his first Thanksgiving, and we had fun explaining the origin of the holiday. "The natives taught the colonists to grow corn and survive, and Thanksgiving marks the cooperation between the two cultures. And then there was the genocide and we gave them all syphilis. Happy Thanksgiving!" He managed three servings of everything, putting all of us seasoned Thanksgivingers to shame.

          On a slightly unrelated note, I figured out the topic for my senior thesis: food. Cooking, eating, meals with family, eating out, foreign food, vegetarianism, comfort food, grocery shopping, eating disorders, fad diets ... the possibilities are endless! And we're not talking some dry academic treatise. No, no, my friends. This will be creative non-fiction! Narrative prose recounting my personal experiences with food! Which ... actually ... is probably not going to be that exciting. But I was excited. I have a topic!
          This year's Thanksgiving will almost certainly be the basis for one of my essays. As will, perhaps, the next story I'll relate:

          Yesterday (this being after Becky and Meghan had departed for windy Chicago), Brittany, Brynn, and Gonzo decided to have a picnic. So we grabbed a blanket and all the Thanksgiving leftovers and proceeded to set up camp in the middle of the courtyard. People thought we were crazy. We yelled at Nick to join us. So we sat there in the cold weather, eating McVities with Nutella (a stroke of genius on the part of Brittany).
          And now, the long haul to the end of the grading period. Two academic essays to finish and a couple hundred more words for creative writing portfolios.

          Deep breath. Ready, set, go.

Things I've learned this week

1. The Natural History Museum is just as cool the second time around.
2. All art should be backed by rich old people so it can be viewed by the public for free.
3. People in the seventeen- and eighteen-hundreds had weird taste in home wall decor (personally, I'd rather not hang a 12'x20' oil painting of God's flooding of the earth over the fireplace if it's all the same to you, thanks).
4. You can use regular photographs as postcards.
5. Delays on the Tube are no fun.
6. When on the phone and spelling something for someone, choose serious words when clarifying a letter; N as in November, P as in Parliament, F as in Fahrenheit. Not, in any circumstance, L as in Lolly.
7. Even though laughter exacerbates a sore throat, it is still worth it.
8. Sainsbury's sells crusty delicious french bread for a pound nine.
9. Torrential downpours happen everywhere and, though you do get wetter by running than by walking in the rain, it is more fun to screech and holler as you dash for cover with friends through the thick, fast drops.
10. Apples to Apples, while undeniably a wonderful game, is made eight times funnier when you write the adjectives and nouns yourself.
    

Despite having no classes (it's Reading Week), it's been quite educational.