Imaginary Cartography

We were riding home one night in the dark. I still remember it with a cut quartz clarity. Earlier Kate had come downstairs to the kitchen and said “Feel like eating, you know, not pasta?” and Cadence and I had dropped our books and our curry powders and run upstairs to get our jackets. A few minutes later, in a flood of abandon, we forgot our essays, our creeping responsibilities, and anything that did not involve us cutting through the wind down Banbury Road, a fine mist clinging to the sides of the street lamps like luminescent beehives.

We went to Turl St Kitchen and had bread and tea and eggplant casserole and talked about vampirism and the economics of scarcity and overall were flush with premonitions of eloquence and insight and the simple but incredible fact that all along Broad St we were nearly the only people out, fifth week blues pushing everyone into the cobalt spires of late lit libraries. The night was clear, the air was crisp, and we sat inside, privileged to have so much to look past and ignore, the lanes and arches, the steeples and gardens, the enclaves of hushed voices speaking close to magic. We remembered it between bites and heartbeats, glowingly alive in the company of ourselves in the company of so much else.

When I was 17, I had wrists like steel And I felt complete

And now my body fades behind a brass charade And I'm obsolete

I was standing in the parking lot looking at a line of evergreen trees, a bank of snow pushed against their trunks, black bark and white drift and heavy drops of widely spaced rain falling at an occasional distance. I was somewhere in the Cascades. It was early March and the cold was wet and dense, but without any sawtoothed edge. I had gotten off the bus at a scheduled twenty-minute stop, the clapboard Dairy Queen by a disused house of rubbled stone was apparently the only building for miles. The air smelled like spruce and peppermint and the sky was muted to a head pulsing whiteness. I was going to see Kate. I desperately needed to see Kate.

I stood in the open light, watching the trees encircle the slick pavement, almost expecting them to be reflected back in the wet blackness, like a pond of dark water, of a sheet of polished obsidian. Everything seemed stable and quiet and maybe this is why I was staring.

I had been moving steadily west for the better part of 24 hours, and now I was swinging back east, a small retrace that was the entire point. Back on the bus I ate a banana split as we curved through the endless snow and staggered swells of country columned with trees that nearly blotted the light from the ground. As we curved around peaks so white capped and towering that I kept mistaking them for the sky, I was numbly aware of another time. A time when I would have been sitting in the back of this bus looking out the window while holding the plastic carton of swirled soft serve, a quick pinwheel of a smirk occasionally crossing my face, and I would have pulled my knees up to my chest and fallen asleep. But I ate my ice cream and stared, strangely aware of things that were not coming naturally to me just then.

Three hours later I stood in thick sod by the neon sign of a hotel, watching curtains of mist being swept across a gray highway. This was far away from home. I thought about how I must look, a lone figure standing silhouetted and still in a blue black twilight as plumes of water and glowing shadow from the gas station down the street plumed across the pine tar expanse. Everything smelled of evergreen, deep and rich like the bottom of a well, fresh and ozone-infused like the swaying tops of the trees. Kate had walked up to the motel behind me without me without either of us noticing the other. And when she called and I walked over to the archway I hugged her with as much lightness as I could manage. Trying to find a way to be lighter, feel lighter, trick myself into being better. This might still be the shameful ulterior motive for the trip, if I’m being honest.

St. Pancras is a castle that never existed, set in some faerie tale that disappeared and which has only been remembered in fits and ghosts and then rebuilt by the moderns. But I think this is exactly why I like it so much. Judge the Victorians all you like, and God knows it’s the easiest thing in the world to accomplish, but they did have certain values. Speed. Space. Going, arriving. The love of lifting heavy things. And when they weren’t going and coming, putting these heavy weights down on people that would be surely crushed under the wheels of the infernal machine, they were making towers of white and orange brick, and watching as people moved through the expansive halls and cut glass windows fogged over on a misty morning, before exploding through distances to be somewhere else.

It’s Christmas and all of London is leaving, the final bustle that will leave one of the largest, most impossible cities on the earth as empty and desolate as a Midwestern prairie. And I’m sitting in the shadow of the clock tower, feeling like looking past my own cruelty and grimace, past the parts that grate against London like flint across a steel rail, and instead feel myself resistant to gravity, arranged geometrically, centre of a rotating dial of people and steam. I’m looking down a street at the edge of Bloomsbury, amazed, once again, that of all the places in all the times and all the eras of the world, and of all bodies and circumstances to be thrown into, that this even begins to exist. There are two children playing at the table next to me, and several women sitting to the left, sighing the kind of exasperated sighs that only Londoners can properly manage. There are people carrying bags and looking down at phones in endless procession outside. There are cars and buses, cabs, people at street corners, Christmas lights beginning to come on, since it’s 3:30 and the sun will soon be setting. And on certain days it is everything to look past, and everything that melts together into the illusion of a single thing. But today that’s not the case, and it’s easy to imagine at least one true thing about everyone waiting in line to get coffee. Certain odds change, certain probabilities shift, and sometimes even I get to realise that after you get your flat white you’ll be off to see someone, to think of someone, to wait in line for a train with the idea of a future hovering right on your eyebrows. Today is the day to think about these kinds of things. Merry Christmas from London. All my love to you all.

Digital and Analogue

The process of connecting to a grid this large is an act that is necessarily ungraceful.

London is, like most singular places, an illusion. But don't worry I'll explain. The name itself is a perfect example. London, and all of the words like London, are really the smallest sentences possible. They are encoded with subject, place, verb, adjective, adverb, all without even really trying. Whatever you picture existing here has a good chance of confronting you when you arrive. Everything. Sam Johnson has already said that. But London is still only one word used for a constellation. It ignores the fact that London spans more than one time and occurs in nearly infinite space. The idea of one London ignores the gravity between its multiple stars. And if you ignore natural forces like that, there are, again like most things, consequences.

Lian and Simeon and I sat with our feet dangling over the black water. The waves that lead away from us were ripples of light, radiating out to the white marble in the distance. Across the tidal basin Jefferson's Memorial stood in a pearlescent silence. We were silent for a little while too.

We were eating hot dogs from Ben Chili Bowl, a hallowed and sacred institution that brings pilgrims from across the plains to seek their reward. And in the mild evening air, and in the deep pointillated dark, we started to talk. 

First about things at hand, about how remarkable it would be if the japanese cherry trees that lined the basin were still in bloom. Lian had just gotten some pictures from the Cherry Blossom Festival published in a submission page in a magazine. It was enough prestige to make her faux-insufferable; every skyline and grease trap behind a burger shack was probably "worthy of her art."

We laughed.  We talked about Jefferson, and our country, and the innumerable pieces of contradicted wisdom that have been passed down to us through the mouthpieces of these marble halls and the men that sat inside them. And then we talked about the more pressing things. 

About the jobs that ask us to work like we are two or three people, and so we feel our personalities strain and crack to fill the space. We talked about feeling separate from certain beauty parts of us - the parts of us that would be on buses running to London, up in church spires looking across country sides, angles of our eyes that would look across a curve of river in a great city and give us something to say about it. We talked about feeling less clever, and we talked about the great guiders of our lives, be they parents or politicians, who have only this one small, slate-colored hope for us. 

We couldn't tell if we've gotten too nice - desperate for approval and success, not brave enough to fight back or too complacent to survive until tomorrow. Or if it was that if we’ve become too evil - the boring kind of evil that will laugh at the paper jam and your co worker burning themselves on the coffee maker. We couldn't tell if we'd like to build the system up, ride it and pay our dues until we can manage it or if there is something in us that wants tear it down or at least ignore it’s stipulations - that you should be doing this and for these reasons and feel lucky because that is as good as it gets so many people are so much worse off. 

We couldn't tell just where we felt injured. We wondered if there is value in survival because maybe this is a cosmic test.

We laughed. “Doesn't it sound like we're reading the Bible? And Lo! God said unto Abraham 'Give me your first born son to work in an unpaid internship!' And Abraham said unto the Lord, ‘Oh my God, anything but that.’

Lian said she took a test online to match her with her perfect career path. “So I took it and they sent me my badge, but I guess the image maker wasn't working because it was just an empty black square.” 

There were certain things unsaid in the stillness. They were thoughts that were too new. Other things rang ridiculous and some sunk mild, and our short starts of laughter floated out over the water for the sheer impossibility of it, and for the simple truth in some matters.

We talked about how much we miss each other. These people, our people, who don't appear to us like strangers. These people who don't require as much English to English translation. Who seem to fit into the spaces without breathing anything. At one point I  scribbled onto a napkin in the deep dark: "The elephant in the room, in much of the world at least, is that some people dislike you for liking what you like." For acting like you act, or for reminding them of whom they are or whom they are not.

Sitting there, I thought that maybe I've stopped believing in the impurity of an action. It's hard to judge someone now for merely what they do. Lian is more than a "hyper-cost-efficient notetaker," and Simeon infinitely more interesting than just "some grad student riding the metro." True devastation comes from intent. Or lack of it. I have trouble judging trying. I care more about what you were trying to be than what you have ended up being so far.

And maybe that is part of it. In the shadows of the white buildings of the world, there is always this sensation that there is a truth I am not being given. And it is hard to not be distracted.

So often in the middle of working, or thinking about what comes next, either from these grand halls, or once I get home at night, there is this blind hoping for one ounce of relief instead of engaging with this metric ton of a moment. Thinking of all the places you'd rather be, instead of thinking about your future. These are the dark sides of the coins in our pockets, weighing down our tables, over our eyes.

“Oh, but I guess we can't complain too much," says Lian

"Why can't you complain? Is someone stopping you? Are they here? Are they listening?!"

I walked down Caldwell Lane feeling the sting of the wind. And the height of the buildings. The strings of Christmas lights bridging the alley. And the gentle surging of people, the tops of their heads bobbing down the side streets. There were smaller gaps between the parts now. I was almost initiated. I could almost feel how London pulled and snagged. I had the simple but powerful confidence I could wander my way to food and water, that I could at least stumble onto a bus. And I could easily take the tube.

There might not be a more electric sense of sureness than to know in your heart of hearts that you can make it through the tunnels, that you can accomplish an apparation wherever you had half a mind to go. And it was also that feeling you get in great cities. That there are locked doors and high walls at every turn, and a storm of keys and ladders scattered over everything. That the light in the windows is what keeps them hovering in the dark air, like every person might be willing to lean over and whisper something to you.

But that's not all. I said *almost* initiated. There was still a heat in my chest, a heat the veered toward exhilaration and the urge to push through and door or hail a cab or start a conversation, and a heat that sometimes felt like nothing but panic, that there was nowhere to sit, no one to meet your eye. At times I would be walking to find something with a simmering curiosity. And at other times I would be walking with feeling of displaced yet ever impending dread.

I had kept walking earlier, off Baker Street and Marylebone. I had felt something similar. 

Not waiting, not holding back from making a decision, but waiting for a decision to be made. In the end, when these things happen, I'm never sure what makes them. I had walked by dozens of little shops and stands, Christmas decorations and people walking along the larger residential thoroughfares of the city. And suddenly, the hour hand of something struck behind my sternum and I was turning into a small deli, narrow, straight, and talking to a girl behind the counter about curries, which I ate with tea on a white pine bar on the other side of the hallway that was the room. 

It wasn't overly special. But I was aware of something, a tide, an undertow, something like an air current that meant that this, this at least, was a good use of time.

Back in the gloom off of Caldwell Lane, I turned left, and as the dark stretch of cobbled road that ran out before me, I thought, this is a mistake. But in the manner evocative of my sense and demeanor, I kept walking, looking down at my legs with curiosity, wondering where they were taking me.

I walked along the dark street, Christmas decorations not hung in this district, light posts seeming to be placed at irregular, mad, and blinking distances, the sounds of unseen heels clipping on cobblestone, the subtle sounds of rattling chains and muffled screams skittering along the closed business fronts. I kept walking alone the sidewalk, overhanging signs and balcony iron pinging slightly in the sleet.

And I continued to turn and walk, seemingly into a part of Soho where no one actually lived, (or where no one was alive), I came to a turn where I stopped.

There as light pooling the street, cast from a pane glass of a side shop, and as I turned my head to see the hanging ham legs in the window, I felt the wave top of a moment, the point when you approach someone at a party, where you speak up to an unknown crowd, when you trust yourself, often against reason, to do something remarkable, and I walked directly into the place.

The place was barrel length and warmly lit, packed with standing people, waiting for a spot at the oak plank bar or the smaller, rail-wide section magnetized to the opposite wall.

Meats were searing on an open cooktop, cheesed being cut with large knives, and everyone had the undeniable winter smell of heat in the midst of cold, and of sausage spices and wine breath and the weight of the sound of our own voices hovering over our heads along the high white ceiling.

I stood there. Foreign, from here, happy, on edge, cold, flushed, and as two people came in the door, brushed off the cold from their jackets, I made room. They were talking about something no one remembers but  everyone enjoys as it happens, and they bumped into me, shoulder to shoulder all of us, the man and woman smiled at each other like they had indeed discovered something important.

"I think we've picked the right place, if everyone is willing to fight so hard for it," I said.

"We've become expert elbowers," the man said.

"I step on toes," said the woman and laughed.

"I knew I could instinctively distrust you both," I said.

And for the briefest of seconds, just enough time to have the thought before focusing on the immensity of the moment and the quick courage I realized it might actually take, I thought 'so this is what it is like to talk to complete strangers in a strange city.'

Conversation fell off as they ordered wine, but I found myself asking how it was, "Not that I'm trying to filch any. I've heard rumors about you two. …From you two."

They laughed and said it was very good and I immediately ordered what they had ordered. And so we stood their drinking wine, and as my accent had at this point become irrecoverably confused, they asked me where, exactly, was I from?

I said "Athens, Georgia. The state not the country."

And they said "Yes, you don't seem like a pro-stalinist sympathizer."

and I told them I was incredibly happy to not prove them wrong. And our conversation flowed to Oxford  and school and London and site seeings and how I was meeting Kate in the morning to head off to Paris for the first time. At this point, they had invited me to sit with them, and I had accepted graciously and as calmly self-conscious as seemed appropriate. We ordered tapas and meats, as the place served only pork, beef, and cured meats, all with some sort of oil or cheese and bread and wine accompanying, all obviously in some some of cosmic promise to bring hope, love, and kosher blood pudding directly to the disillusioned maw of humanity.

And the man and woman bought a bottle of wine to share with me, something I could only refused once before accepting, as is polite and good for everyone, and I returned the favor a respectable ten minutes later, as even my addled and weakened liver/skeletal system seemed to contently go along with the indefatigable flow of the evening. They told me they were fashion designers and textile enthusiasts, trying to host a website (with a real dot com monicker, none of that .uk rubbish) and where to get inexpensive Burberry source cloth before the criminal markup (for my sister), their favorite wine bars in Paris (for Kate and Cadence and myself) and how to survive transatlantic flights with grace and humor.

And from the moment they asked me if I would like to sit with them at the bar and share some food and talk, from the moment of suspending disbelief in any and everything that would make me incapable of such social graces, and canceling every thought that would make them capable of thievery and murder, I never once felt like we were forced together or stepping on each others evening. We were polite and open and enjoying each other's company and, well, avoiding every terrible stereotype that American and the Brits seem to have.

I didn't feel in danger, I hope they didn't feel trapped by an overly enthusiastic Uni-kid who was veering straight toward wine drunk and ham bold. It was something you never truly make happen yourself. You feel that. You feel grateful instantly.

As we were walking out, I hugged them both, thanked them immensely for a wonderful meal and even more outstanding company, and they said, well, it is odd to say such things in this world, and perhaps it is not the true that we'll never speak again, but, well, have a nice life.

And we turned and went our separate ways and I walked off into the sleet rain in the glow of London with the rising feeling you think you could feel if you were able to take a huge breath of warm oxygen deep under water and feel yourself immediately begin to rise to the surface.

    Looking up and out from the window of the bus, I think you can be forgiven for thinking that you are viewing the sky. With the mist sweeping between the spires of evergreen, sometimes you might even be correct in this naive illusion.     But more often than not it would prove to be just that, a trick of the eye, a certainty that crumbles, and the sky you imagined spreading out before you and stretching up larger than creation, just as always, suddenly reveals itself to be the side of a white capped mountain slope, towering up above you into the particulate, mocking any sense of scale you assumed you possessed and felt any confidence in using.      Trailing through the curves of the cascades, you lose track of horizon and distance and just how large the wide earth is, and you feel your sense of the infinite displayed for what it really is, a poor and laughable grasping at straws. You think, if this slope of rock is as big as I imagined the sky, what else am I missing? 

Pablo Neruda

Ahora contaremos doce y nos quedamos todos quietos. Por una vez sobre la tierra no hablemos en ningún idioma, por un segundo detengamos, no movamos tanto los brazos.

Seria un minuto fragante, sin prisa, sin locomotoras, todos estaríamos juntos en una inquietud instantánea.

Los pescadores del mar frio no harían daño a las ballenas y el trabajador de la sal miraría sus manos rotas.

Los que preparan guerras verdes, guerras de gas, guerras de fuego, victorias sin sobrevivientes, se pondrían un traje puro y andarían con sus hermanos por la sombra, sin hacer nada.

No se confunda lo que quiero con la inaccion definitiva: la vida es solo lo que se hace, no quiero nada con la muerte.

Si no pudimos ser unanimes moviendo tanto nuestras vidas, tal vez no hacer nada una vez, tal vez un gran silencio pueda interrumpir esta tristeza, este no entendernos jamas y amenazarnos con la muerte, tal vez la tierra nos enseñe cuando todo parece muerto y luego todo estaba vivo.

Ahora contare hasta doce y tu te callas y me voy.

--------An English Attempt by Paul Kasay------------

To Be Quiet

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still For once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language; let's stop for a second, and not move our arms so much.

It would be an sweet moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together inside a sudden and unexpected curiosity.

Fisherman of the cold sea would not harm the whales and the man gathering salt would look down on his broken hands

Those who prepare green wars, wars of gas, wars of fire, victories without survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.

Don't confuse what I want with the a forever stillness Life is all it is about I want nothing to do with death

If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, perhaps not doing anything  perhaps a huge silence could interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems to be dead in winter and later proves to be alive. 

Paris Metro by magic_fella on Flickr.