London 4

June 13, 2013

Yeats's birthday.

Flash from the train ride from Gatwick– the slopes around the tracks smothered in wildflowers. Swans in the distant rivers.

Dream two nights ago that I had been made Chancellor. I called the real Chancellor to ask if it was true, and all right with her, and she said it was. Even after waking I was planning the wonderful things I was going to do, not quite convinced that it was a dream. Curiously happy about it. Last night I decided to explore a haunted skyscraper, and got only to the first floor when I encountered a family of female vampires. I hit one with my fist and she collapsed, but got back up again. I slugged her down again, and again she got up. She made no move to attack me back. I perceived that this cold go on forever if I did not move on.

Tate Modern yesterday, skirting St. Paul’s to wait for a time I felt more sanctified. Children’s day at the museum. It’s pleasant to see- mostly to hear– all those children about, and I hope it really does give them some kind of life expansion. Looking back at my youth, these trips did enlarge my perspectives, and dwell with me in memory today, but then I was one of those who always got the message, who, introduced to high culture, gobbled it up like a starveling. In the Tate café I sat beside a kid who was keeping his teacher’s attention by declaring he saw nothing in the works they had scrutinized but “ugly, flat faces” and that art was useless and pointless. That perspective is so foreign to me I assumed he was taking it just to keep his teacher’s interest, for she, of course, kept trying to win him over. Maybe children are allowed their own judgment too early. Too many wilful declarations deviate them from the path of learning onto the path of self-assertion, and some never get back.

It must be said that though it was only outright raining last night, not one ray of sun has hit the ground since I came to London.

Evening it was off to the Apollo to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which turned out to be a delightful, thoughtful and fulfilling piece of theater, which could not, however, be produced on any stage without a million bucks to spend on tech. I sat next to Richard Smith, Consejo de Culture e Direccion de Education y Cultura in Guatemala. He told me of his one published work, a play about a series of disasters– his description was cut short by the opening of Act II, but afterwards I met his wife and daughter. The daughter’s son is autistic, so they had come to the play to gain insight. I did. Hope they did.

There’s a model train in the play, and as I watched I flashed back to something my father made me. It was a long piece of sheet metal curved into train tunnel shape, and then bent at the edges so it would fit securely under the tracks. He decorated it with trees and grass in sparkles attached by glue, so it would look like a hill covering a railway tunnel. I wonder if I appreciated it enough. I wonder of I thanked him. It would be a treasure to me today.

Happy as ever weaving home by night. I passed by Bloomsbury Square again, but my fox friend was too canny to be seen twice in the same place.

Wearing my “Asheville, Cesspool of Sin” T shirt, but it will be under so many layers nobody will see it.