Shelora's Excellent AdventureAboard the train to Stansted airport:
As the train winds its way to Stansted, I have a few moments to reflect on my whirlwind tour of London. Of course, the first thing that stands out is the amount of sheer stuff that I am packing around! So much of my attention has gone to managing it! OK.OK. You warned me. I cut it in half, but it is still Twice as much as I need. I was able to leave a whole wack of it in Left Luggage at Liverpool Station, and spent a good hour there, taking pictures, going to the Internet café (in MacDonald’s!) and generally getting myself situated. I was exhausted from being up all night on the plane, with a lovely young woman who kept me company chatting abuout her plans to buy in Canada with the thirty thousand dollars she had earned being a housekeeper and chauffer to a rich woman in London. Then I had to decide what to do from Gatwick. I met a teacher from Vancouver who teaches at Stratford Hall, which is an International School near Britannia. I decided to take the bus to Stensted, and fly from there to Barcelona the next day. I assumed that I would be able to get into the Travelodge there. No, of course, unlike my lovely daughter, Jessamyn, who was so well organized and planned, I had not booked, and there was no hotle anywhere to be had. The ticket lady quoted me a high price for the ticket, and said it was cheaper on the internet. Off I went to the internet, but first I took a shower in the airport so I could feel like a human being again. Mistake. I should have gone on the internet first. But at a pound for TEN MINUTES, I discovered not only that I could not book online, but that it was going to be MORE expensive. I went back to the ticket agent, and of course, she had gone home. There was nothing to be done except to stay in the airport. I was astonished to see literally hundreds of young people bedded down on the FLOOR of the airport. That held no attraction for me, so I stayed up all night walking around the airport. In the morning the woman said that at midnight the price had DOUBLED!!! I asked her what she suggested, and she said if you have no time pressure, I would wait a few days, and it will go down drastically, if you book on the internet. So I decided to go back into London, and stay a few days. I thought I would be able to stay with my friend Marta in London. Ironically, Marta Stajanova was not available, but I met another woman named Marta in a Youth Hostel. She was a performance artist from Brazil, and we spent the day touring London on double-decker sight-seeing bus. Then we sailed up the Thames to the Tower of London and back on the river boat, and took in a different view of London from the water. The bus went through Mayfair, past Buckingham Palace, and into the richest real estate on the planet, all owned by one man, the Duke of Westminster, the Queen’s cousin. He owns every property in Belgradia and Mayfair and Westminster, billions and billions of dollars worth of real estate. The ironic part is that much of it was clearly empty, five story Georgian Houses waiting for billionaires to rent them!
After the trip around the City of London, past the Temple of Mithras, 2000 years old, over the Tower Bridge, which is actually classified as a boat, because it is a floating bridge, past the Tower of London, where Fitzgerald relative, Anne Boleyn, was beheaded; past the replica of the Globe Theatre, which American actor Sam Wannamaker built, (those rich cultured Jews sure know how to spend their money, eh?) past the City of London School where Daniel Radcliffe, the star of Harry Potter, went to school; past Cleopatra’s needle, which was gifted to London by Egypt after the British prevented Napoleon from invading Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars in 1817, past The Playhouse, where The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been playing forever, past the black and gold railings along the Thames, which Queen Victoria had painted black after her beloved Alfred died, as a sign of her deep mourning; down the street where the Great Fire of London started in the bakery of Thomas Fine, and finally to Picadilly Square, where the Angel of Christian Charity, looking suspiciously like Cupid or Eros, stands guard. The story is that if you fall in love at the stroke of midnight,near this statue, you will stay in love forever. I will have to remember that.
Marta and I got off and had lunch, which we bought in a Starbucks. We ate on a Park bench, while having an amazing conversation about art.She does installation art, combined with dance, and knows someone who trained dance and technology at UC Irvine. His name is Johannes Birringer, and he is a professor at a small University in England. (Probably someone who knows your father, Katy and Jessamyn! These kinds of synchronicities continue to amaze me!) We became so engrossed in conversation about Growtowski, and Polish Theatre, and her installation of a woman dancing, naked in a BATHTUB filled with water, and the artist and theatre director Iadues Kantor, who used to direct on stage as part of the performance, until the day of his death, when they did the show, “Today is my birthday” without him, for the last time. His work was about the interface between life and death, so it was fitting that his last performance was without his presence in physical form.
But enough of that! Today is MY birthday, and I am not dead! I am alive and well and thrilled to be in Barcelona!
I am situated in an absolutely lovely apartment, with a view of Sagrada Familia, the famous unfinished cathedral started a hundred years ago by Gaudi. I have a lovely room with a terrace, and internet access! I share the apartment with a woman of my age who makes her living renting out rooms in huge apartments which she owns. She speaks no English at all, but the lovely young Ana who hooked me up with this place speaks English, and arranged everything. Today I will go to Sagrada Familia, and to the Cathedral, and I will have a lovely day. This evening I will go dancing at Emperitor. I am reading The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho. Really fascinating stuff, and just right for the contemplative mood I am in as I prepare to shed all the accoutrements I have brought with me, and put them in storage, and pare down to the essentials, to begin my real pilgrimage, El Camino De Santiago (Saint James) de Compostella. (which means the Field of Stars!). I am thinking of all of you. Wish me well on my adventure.
