A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: London

This weekend past I took my last flight until the flight home, and I took that flight to London. Traveling under the guise of Dr. Donald Trumbo, I went to London to visit my friend Mary Kate the Actress, who was in the British American Drama Academy, or BADA. I love acronyms.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were the culmination of the semester for BADA, where, instead of finals, students acted in plays. I caught the Comedy of Errors on Thursday, which is a Shakespeare play about two sets of identical twins, so basically I didn't catch anything, and then Mariana Pineda on Friday, which is a play about a Spanish patriot's execution, so, you can guess how that ended.

Mary Kate was billed as Lucia/First Novice in Mariana Pineda, and for her performance I awarded her Baller Status, which is usually an award I reserve for great science fiction but which I also give out when I feel so moved by particularly deep emotions or beautiful people.

It was in London that I recently became cultured. On Friday, I went first to the National Gallery, and then to the Tate Modern. It seems like London has art up one side and down the other (wherever those sides actually are, I don't know); the National Gallery contains the great works of the world, whatever that means, and the Tate Modern in its turn has the great works of the modern era. I know what that means. It means a small guild of artists went into the Tate Modern, put on blindfolds, and started throwing paint around. It was in the Tate Modern that I, for the first time, left an exhibit in actual fear. Things in the Tate can get out of hand, pretty quickly.

The National Gallery, by the way, contains many paintings from Picasso's Blue Period. I can only hope that when I die, people will anthologize my writings and label one section of my life the Shenanigans Period, where I could not stop using the word "shenanigans."

I spent a lot of time in Hyde Park, on the suggestion of Douglas Adams. "Let's not mince words," Adams wrote, "Hyde Park is stunning." Spot on, Adams. I had planned out an entire day of activities, but ended up scrapping a good deal of it in favor of remaining in Hyde Park. One of the big differences in Rome and London is the space. Rome is extremely compact, and comes off as a Hollywood caricature of a big cities, with big roads that look like alleyways and no actual alleyways at all. London, however, loves its open space, and has alleyways aplenty. Hype Park, as well as other parks scattered across the city, are a testament to how much space they love. It's like a two way mirror, that from the outside looking in the city can see the park, but from the inside out the Park doesn't register the city. Love it.

I went to Westminister Abbey only to see the Poet's Corner, where all the great English figures of art are buried. Yes, Westminister is huge and gilded and a masterpiece, but by this time I have had it up to here, and though you cannot see it I am pointing to a point a little below my left ear, with architecture, so I get to pick and choose what I process as a tourist. So I saw the tombs of Shakespeare, Edmund Spencer, John Milton, et cetera (et cetera in this case encompasses Chaucer, T.S. Eliot, and others) and got repremanded for photographing the tomb of Dickens.

On Saturday, Mary Kate took me to Henry V. This requires a new post, because what I have to say on Henry V cannot possibly be shoehorned into this airport bookstore travel log.

P.S. Spending the night in an airport is a bad idea. Sometimes it is necessary, as if your flight leaves at seven, thus you have to be there at five, but then you have to leave the city at four, et cetera, but if you can avoid it, do, because the reason all benches in all airports have armrests is to prevent people from taking a good night's sleep.

A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Venice

This weekend the whole Arkansas in Rome program took a field trip to Venice, the city of salt water and the ever present feeling that one is sinking. There are small roads in Venice, but all mass transport takes place on water - no wheels for rolling or for steering, only fins and helms. All cars are parked and left outside the city, on the mainland. Not even a Vespa is permitted.

Venice was built on a marsh, which seems to happen a lot with old major cities - which is ironic, given what a bad idea that seems to be. Settlers fitted wooden poles into the mud of the ocean floor, waited for a spell, then started building on top of said wood. After learning this, the whole of the time I spent in Venice was accompanied by a small minor fear in the backwoods of my brain that said that I was about to bear witness to a second Atlantis, and that maybe in another three thousand years people with say that Venice was just a myth, and that Cass Trumbo was just a legend - truly, no one could ever be that handsome and smart. Certainly no one could ever run as fast as they say he could.

One thing I found interesting was the patron saint of Venice, St. Mark. In the beginning of the city, there was another, lesser saint tasked with divine protection. Once the power of the Venetians grew, they decided they deserved a higher ranking saint, possibly one who was on Jesus's T5, and so they sailed off into the sunset and stole St. Mark's body from Alexandria. When asked about this turn of events, St. Mark had no comment.

Our eccentric professor Emilio led us through the smaller streets of Venice, touring buildings and making up stories about his lost loves. Not once, but twice did he feign an attempt to commit suicide over fictional affairs, trying to climb over railings and jump into the ocean before his students could hold him back. In the end, though, no one was harmed. Though I did see a Penn State student jump off one of the two bridges spanning the Grand Canal, landing in the water twenty feet below. When asked if I was next, I said I'd jump for a dollar and good moral support. However, no American dollars were to be had, and no support was to be found.

Abstract art is on the opposite end of the spectrum from understanding. Venice is one of the three places in the world with a Guggenheim Collection, which is apparently a big deal. I didn't know. I went there by myself, which was a very bad decision - I think the Guggenheim took a piece of my soul. I spent about an hour wandering aimlessly, unable to form any sort of plan for seeing the entire museum, nor to assess the meaning of various works, so assailed by the forces of surrealism was I, that I was driven to abstraction (which is much worse than being driven to distraction).

The Guggenheim is staffed almost entirely by young people, earning pennies on internships from around the world; and I say around the world, but most were from English speaking countries. Heavily discouraged by the surrounding art, I turned to talking to the staff, and managed to strike out with the British answer to the strawberry blonde.

ME: What do you make of it?

SB: I believe it's Picasso's The Studio.

ME: Oh. I thought it was a rocket ship.

SB: Well, that's obviously his self portrait, and that's obviously a figure of a woman.

ME: Yeah, you see, I figured that was a square, and that there was a circle, but beyond that I was lost.

SB: Then you are an idiot.

And you might say, no one could either be that rude or know that little about Picasso, but if I'm lying I'm dying.