London 4

November 27, 2009

Black Friday in the US; nothing in particular here. The blazing clear winter air continues.

Marathon walking, from Parliament to the Tate Britain, and then from the Tate to Westminster Abbey, up Whitehall, through Covent Gardens, and finally back to the hotel. I think Tate Britain is my favorite London gallery. It feels lighthearted, in a way. Perhaps that is a quality of British art, never having been a religion, as In France, or too much in the service of religion, as in Italy, always making room for colorful–or sometimes sublime–eccentricity. Samuel Palmer gleamed like gems in his dark corner.

Slipped and fell on the steps of St. Martin’s in the Fields. I was so tired I was no longer picking up my feet.


Early evening. I am always terribly sad on the last day of a trip, and always put it down to causes deeper and more severe than simply not being ready to go home. I think that I will make best friends at every pub and in the lobby of every theater, and when that doesn’t happen, or happens in a way clearly ephemeral, I wonder what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with the world, Odd, as I was emerging (maybe for the last time) from the woods of Russell Square, I ran into myself. Rather I ran into the man I might have been had a whole number of circumstances been different. He was red gold and handsome and powerful and erect and self-contained, in way that resembled me, if but the world had said “yes” evert time I asked, if but in Eden. I stood and watched until he disappeared into the darkness. He never looked back.

The University of London has been across the Square from me the whole time, and I never knew till I went wandering.