Routes

Last Sunday I went to the Museum of London, an amazing museum at the Barbican about the complete history of London, with four galleries each covering prehistory, Roman annexation, Medieval/Renaissance and the 17th century fire and plagues. It's an awesome spot, and highly recommended to anyone interested in London, its history and development.

This poem, written by Bernardine Evaristo, is carved into glass in the entrance of the prehistory gallery. I'm not a huge poetry person. I say I'm too ADD, but really I just lack the patience that it takes to be profoundly with words the way you need to be to really get poetry. That being said, since I journeyed to City Lights bookstore a few weeks ago, and bought a book of Beat Poetry, I've been getting more into it. I actually took 15 minutes to really be with this poem when I was at the museum, and I even took a picture of the glass so I would be able to bring it home with me.

Take a few minutes and enjoy...

(and thank you for your wonderful words, Bernardine Evaristo):

Routes

Time has frozen this midwinter night

Outside, the pavement coated with a transparent skin

Inside, I retreat into down, sensing the vibration

Of polar sheets creeping south, burying us

A thousand feet under blue ice, diverting the river

Out of the Vale of St. Albans into the Lindon Basin

Welcome home. Welcome first citizen, chasing

Reindeer over the hip joint with France,

Tropical and glacial cycles, waves of migrators -

Your long trek north, from below the Sahara,

Circling a camp fire by the Thames

The hair of wolves over tight backs; dread -

Locked beards, un-polished eyes, your slow,

Heavy mouths chewing fresh rhinoceros, roasted

No spices, unaware that you are dislocating

From France as you eat, that the Channel is rising,

That my heated body floats above a London of birch

And pine forest, of open grassland where gangs

Of straight-tusked elephants gather in Trafalgar

Square, hippopotami wallow in the brown marshes

Of Pall Mall and from Marble Arch I gaze longingly

On sheets of marigold, meadowsweet, mint

The music I'm loving right now

Stile Antico is without a doubt my new favorite early music choral group. I've dabbled in lots of groups, too. I was an early music groupie. Seriously. I traveled around trailing a particular group of early music singers. I've been a fan of the Sixteen and the Tallis Scholars and Henry's Eight and all of 'em. But Stile Antico has set the bar high. Really high. I'm listening to Media Vita right now. Media Vita translates to "In the midst of Life we are in Death". It's a 25 minute meditation on mortality and redemption, as one reviewer on emusic said. I'm hooked.

You know what's beyond fathomable...that 100 years ago, if you wanted to listen to music like this, you had to go to evensong at Westminster Abbey. Or a really good church. And now I just download it off of emusic for 22 cents a download. Seriously, this is insane. Thousands of years of human history spent without music on demand. And I get itunes. My dad thought he was the shiznit with his 8 tracks. I have about 80g of music on a hard drive that I can take with me anywhere. It's almost criminal that I don't appreciate it more.

Speaking of which - gratitude journal time.

Today I am grateful for:
Snuggles with Lewis Hamilton (my cat, not the F1 driver. The F1 driver would be nice, though...)

A clean kitchen with more counter space now that we threw the microwave under the sink since we never used it.

My make-at-home iced mochas

That I'm finally getting over my da*n cold.

Music on Demand and kick*ss speakers with which to enjoy it (courtesy of that $5k gift card I won at Target 2 years ago).

ipads suck and horses in commercials

So the ipad went on sale over the weekend. Being a go-go-gadget girl, when I first heard about this beautiful tablet, I was certain that I'd buy one. I bookmarked the site. I ooohed and ahhhed. I dreamt of writing the Great American Novel sitting on a train, on my beautiful stylish tablet while listening to pandora.

Except you can't with the ipad. No multitasking. Seriously? For something that's supposed to be a replacement for a netbook, no multitasking? Yep, as far as gizmodo's list of 8 things that suck about the ipad goes, this is number one for me. Then I found the iphonedownloadblog's 16 reasons that the ipad sucks, (double your ipad-sucks-fun) and read about the lack of widgets, the battery life sucking, and the weight.

So yep, I'm not into it.

But what I am into is that funny Big Red verizon commercial (see above "double your fun" reference). You'll watch youtube on a horse? Man, that makes me laugh.

speaking of using horses in commercials, I love this Old Spice one. Seriously, this guy rocks. I could watch this over and over. How did they do that???

I'm tempted to find out how they did that in one take with the horse and all, but I kind of like the mystery, so I'm not going to find out.

So yeah, I'm liking horses in commercials, and not liking the ipad.

More stuff to keep up with

I've been playing around with Google Reader, finally. I haven't shared everything that I'm following yet, but I'll keep sharing stuff on my public shared page. I love the idea that Google Reader lets you subscribe to any website, whether they have an RSS feed or not. For example, I subscribed to the BBC History Magazine today, and it doesn't look like they have an RSS feed, but with a little bit of Google magic, I can keep up with what they're posting on their site without having to remember to go to their site all the time. Presto! Magic! I love it! EXCEPT...

...there are currently 385 unlistened-to podcasts sitting in itunes right now. About 120 emails. In a world where information is everywhere, it becomes very difficult to not feel pressured to keep up with everything. So I'm going to have to be very judicious about deleting stuff, and not getting down if I suddenly have 100 unread items, and simply deleting them.

There's no place like home...

...even though it's snowing at the moment. Last week I was in England and June was busting out all over the place. Below is a picture of the daffodils blooming on the banks of the river Cam while my best buddy Sandor and I went punting.

Sandor is the big brother I never had. I've known him for almost 10 years and we have this funny tradition that we always go to Cambridge when I'm in the UK. We generally go punting, and then to Evensong at King's, and sometimes wind down with a coffee and CD perusal at Borders, but now that all the Borders bookshops in the UK have gone out of business, that part didn't happen. Sigh.

Now I'm back in my cozy mountains, the week before Easter, and it's snowing. At least I have a good reason to drink the leftover peppermint hot chocolate from Christmas. I've spent the last two days since we got back putzing around, getting the house back in order, and generally getting comfy at home again while catching up on some sleep.

Whilst puttering, I was catching up on one of my favorite podcasts, In Our Time. Melvyn Bragg may not be the most energetic guy in radio, but dang, he's brilliant. The episode I just listened to was on Boudica, who used to be known as Bodicea, but I guess that's changed recently. She is this amazing, mythical (and possibly real) woman who led tribes of Britons against the Romans in AD 60-61. She sacked Colchester, Roman London, and St. Albans where she was finally defeated. Throughout the centuries she's been used by Queens like Elizabeth I to show the strength and power of the British.

Speaking of British History, I've been spending a lot of time reading the Henry III Fine Rolls Project - a giant list of concessions, payments and petitions to the King from 1216-1272. It's a little window into what people wanted from their King, and just the type of admin-type of work that was done on a day to day basis. For example, on 16 November 1226, the Sherriff of Leicestershire was ordered to answer the king for a forfeiture of 10 pounds in which Robert Butler fell by judgement of his county court for the unjust vexation he made against the abbot of Croxton, Oh what I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in that meeting. It blows my mind to think that 800 years ago people were just going about their business the same way we are today. We tend to think of people eight centuries ago as foreigners, aliens, not people we'd have much in common with. But I think we would have a lot to talk about with those folks, and the juicy gossip of whatever Robert Butler said about the abbott of Croxton.

Wednesday

Weird day today. I passed out last night at 10, and then woke up at 4. Then I was awake until 8 and went back to sleep until 11. I don't like sleeping until 11, but I prefer sleep to not sleeping. Then we left for Victoria so J could catch his flight to Amsterdam. We're having a little separate vacation now while he visits friends in Amsterdam and Sweden. I'd have been going with him, but I left it too late to buy my tickets, and the BA strike has made it impossible. So I saw him off, and am enjoying the extra time in London.

I walked from Victoria to Westminster Abbey and played tourist. I don't think I've ever taken a picture of Westminster Abbey before. I've always felt self-conscious about being an American and never wanted to look like a tourist.

Then a walk through St. James' Park, which is my second-favorite park in London, after the Hampstead Heath. The birds were out playing.

Afterwards I wandered up to Picadilly, and had fun in book heaven at Waterstones - five floors of books...ahhhhh, comfort. Then through Soho, eating a sandwich at Golden Square, and then some shopping. I was blown away by the fact that Borders has closed in the UK. It's made me very sad - I've spent hours and hours in the stores on Oxford Street and Charing Cross road. I had a quiet evening in the flat, took a lovely bath, and then we watched the Tottenham/Fulham match. I should be writing right now, but watching Road Wars (the UK COPS equivalent) is much more appealing.

Bath

Tuesday we went to Bath, which is famous for two things: 1) Jane Austen spent a lot of time there, and 2) the Roman baths. It rained, so we didn't do much but try to stay dry. We did, however, seek sanctuary in the Abbey. And I loved the train trip. I love everything about train trips in the UK. I love getting to the station early and getting lunch from Upper Crust. I love getting magazines at WH Smith. I love getting a treat at Boots. The whole thing is just too wonderful for words.

Above is the vaulted ceiling with flying buttresses and everything like that in the Abbey. Below is the organ, which is just spectacular. I like smaller abbey's like this one - Westminster is just too crowded and you can't get a good look around at everything, and it's also expensive. I'm happy puttering around Bath Abbey for a few hours instead.