Everything Looks New Again, and Can So Many Times

I love writing titles like that. My job involves, among other things, SEO-conscious writing and good internet content practices. Writing a title like that is the wordsmith equivalent of gliding about in a sequined caftan.

Here are things I’ve done since I last wrote to you properly: went to Paris as part of a duo, took a timeout in Rennes, went to Paris solo*, explored Berlin, slept in a boat in Amsterdam, joined my family in Florida for the holiday, got drunk on salt in New Orleans while rediscovering my love of oysters, decided to live in Capitol Hill for one more year, took an intro to programming class, got a new job, flew business class to Tokyo, bathed naked in a hot mineral pool while gazing at Mount Fuji, turned 32**, and returned to my blog.

I swear, I lose track at how eventful stuff can get until I write one of these big run-on paragraphs.

I also got a new camera. This is the first picture I took with it.

In which I learned the Sculpture Park got a hell of a new addition.

Here’s another view that isn’t the first shot ever of something: Continue reading →

I Loved the Atomium in Brussels Just as Much as I Thought I Would

We first saw the Atomium from the high viewpoint next to the Palace of Justice in central Brussels. Just an angular speck on the horizon, faintly silver in the late-afternoon light. Victor, our Brussels Greeter, pointed it out. I gazed at it and thought, I am coming to you.

There are two things that brought me to Brussels.* The real reason I ended up there this summer is because Tom is a uniquely determined kind of person and searched and searched until he found us an awesome deal on American that used miles we’d received from a credit card deal earlier this year. We knew we wanted to go to Europe, and he found a way for us to get there for a mere $375 each, round trip (and the return leg was business class, mmmmm). That’s almost reason enough to go anywhere.

But the seed of wanting to go to Belgium was planted some time before. I have friends who are also lucky enough to travel, and last year, they went to Paris and Brussels. They’re also engaging enough to be able to propose a thoroughly worthwhile slideshow night to show their trip pictures. I was enraptured by their many photos of Paris, of course, but the showstopper was some silver angular thing that looked like it had fallen out when someone gave the 1950s a good shake.

“What…” I began to ask. “What is that thing?”

That thing was the Atomium, Brussels’ version of the Space Needle. Made for Expo 58, the 1958 World’s Fair, the Atomium is an iron crystal model 165 billion times larger than the real thing. It is huge and shiny and immediately, undeniably absurd, and I saw it and immediately thought: I want to go to there. Nay, I needed to go to there. But at the time, I put it in the back of my head with the other 150,000 places I want and need to go. It’s not rare for me to feel that pull of I HAVE TO BE PHYSICALLY IN THE SAME PLACE AS THAT SOMEDAY.** I’m pretty practiced with filing these impulses away for the right time.

But when Tom suggested Brussels for our big summer trip, and I accepted, my pre-trip research yielded a grand thing: the Atomium and I would be together at last.

To get there, take the Brussels Metro about 30 minutes north of downtown. You’ll emerge in what seems like the most unremarkable suburbia, until you turn around and…

1_atomium-from-afar

Oh. Hello.

I didn’t think it would be possible, but I was even more taken with it in person. There are two qualities that can make me love something almost immediately:

The thing is a model of something else.
Said model is much larger or much smaller than the original.

How could I not be besotted? It’s a big, absurd relic of a strange time. It’s like it was made for me.

Brussels' Atomium, slightly closer

Things like this mess with one’s perspective in the most beautiful way. This towering, unlikely object, gradually…

Brussels' Atomium, gradually filling the frame

…filling…

Staring up at Brussels' Atomium from the ground

…your entire field of vision.

(A note: I have dozens of pictures like this, because this thing is photogenic and reveals new angles every few steps. However, part of being a good writer is being a good editor, and so I have spared you. You’re welcome.)

At the base, though, the whole thing briefly devolves into the worst of Belgian tourism. A person being paid to sullenly collect 30 cents from everyone who has the misfortune to need to pee. Spendy tickets. Children running hither and thither in the not-fun way. This was our last day of the trip, and my back hurt, and I was already a couple days past my usual isn’t-humanity-neat good humor deserting me. So all I wanted – all I wanted, more than anything – was to just get my audio guide and get up in that thing and be one with the Atomium, ok.

First, this:

Apologies for the poor picture. I am American and therefore become remarkably unbrave when faced with superfluous security screens because I assume they’re staffed by unkind people on power trips.

Fun fact: the symbol for “security screen” seen here is the same one they use outside for “pickpockets gonna take your stuff.” Make of that what you will.

Once through (and once we had our picture taken with a guy in a big-headed character costume of a redheaded cartoon bellhop, something we wouldn’t begin to understand until we hit the Belgian Comic Strip Center later that day), we encountered a long, long, winding line leading to an elevator. Next to them was an escalator with no line at all. Thinking myself very clever indeed, I suggested we head up the escalator and beat the ridiculous crowd.

The elevator takes you to the exhibits, which are basically catnip to my particular kind of nerdery. 50s-style concept illustrations, the cute outfits the Brussels ambassadors (read: pretty young women, go figure) wore, the various concepts for the Atomium, and press clippings galore. Here’s a thing I learned this trip: did you know that the world does not agree on how many continents there are? Fact! The Brussels World Fair insignia is a five-pointed star, “representing the five continents,” the accompanying card breezily informed me as I leaned over, squinting at badges with the fair’s insignia in embossed relief.

I stood straight up, pressing my audioguide wand to my ear. “Five continents???” I hissed to Tom, who was a couple display cases away. “Did you know we haven’t settled this bet yet?” He was unaware as well. This basic fact, this elemental thing we teach tiny children to let them feel that they can quantify the world and hold it in their hands even a miniscule amount, this is something we can’t agree on. We have regular trade talks with countries that inventory the earth differently. God, I love traveling. This is not the kind of stuff that comes out in casual conversations with people you’ve known forever.***

The interior at this point was perfectly 50s-innovation thematic, original to the event. These stairs are so charming you’d practically dance on down them to your basement nuclear shelter.

Awesome mid-century Atomium stairs

But after that, it got perfectly… wonderfully… weird.

The Atomium's Cylon escalator

The lights dimmed. People grew quieter.

And suddenly… we emerged into this.

Pulsing red lights and LEDs in the Atomium

Hold on

More of the Atomium's Cylon room

No, let’s discuss this

The core of the Atomium's Cylon base

Ok, what the hell is that?

Along with the sudden switch in décor, which moves from Tomorrowland’s rich pastels to an angry teenage nerd’s bedroom as decorated by Cyberdog and Spencer’s Gifts, the sound changes. It’s an immersive experience, this thing, with throbbing bass and enough moving staticky sounds to leave you feeling quite off-kilter.

And then we ascended one more escalator and found an explanation. It was a two-month art installation, an experience based on a short story about a ship’s AI system fighting off an invading virus while ending up unavoidably changed.

Oh.

Here’s something I like about Europe: there are so many old, wonderful things there that they can do things like this in stride. It’s not that the US doesn’t do out-of-the-ordinary things with our Approved Historical Landmarks and Such, but I can’t imagine the White House covering a room in mirrors and simulating rain. I can’t even imagine the Space Needle, the philosophical sibling of the Atomium, attempting something like this. Yet the Atomium harbored a Cylon rave, and, last year, Versailles welcomed a variety of modern art, including lining the wall of one stately room with a 12-foot-tall brick of fallen leaves encased in chicken wire. They’ve existed long enough that they know that most ordinary things clean up just fine, in the end.

And then that’s the conclusion of part one of the tour. The audioguide informed me that it was time to head back downstairs… to the elevator line.

Shit.

On the way there, winding down stairs (there are quite a lot; the Atomium is hard on people without a lot of mobility), we glimpsed this through locked glass doors.

The Atomium's adorable nap room for lucky children

In addition to I will someday share physical space with that thing, I occasionally get flashes of That is a thing I will do or have if I ever possess a ridiculous amount of money. I experienced that here. You, I thought at these little pods, you will someday be where I rest my eccentric, rich, weary head.

This is their daycare. Because the Atomium has a lot of spheres, and some of them are conference space. This is true.

Back at the ground level, we joined the elevator queue. Standing still did my back no favors, so I leaned on Tom as I pulled my heel toward my bum, hoping that stretching my angry, tightening muscles might get me through the rest of the day. I weighed whether it made sense to stand in this line, to go to the top of some tall thing that overlooked stuff I wasn’t familiar with. I have a resistance toward tall things; people spend their valuable vacation time going to the top of them without weighing whether it’s really the most interesting thing to do.

And then came a new piece of information:

The Atomium, glimpsed from inside through a rain-covered window

We’d been lucky enough to have pretty great weather throughout the trip. It had felt a little close and humid out earlier, but I’m still jaded by 18 years of Midwestern summers. It turns out that I don’t recognize the indications of an oncoming European torrential rain.

“Will it even be worth it to get up there?” I whined. “What are we even going to see? We’ll be inside the thing I want to look at.” The first part of me that gets chased away with pain is my sense of casual sure-why-not adventure.

It took about an hour, time I was afraid would be better spent looking at artifacts from the Belgian comic book industry.

But in the end, we made the right choice by staying.

We crammed into an elevator like Vienna sausages, and the guide blithely told us about how fast it was and how impressive it once was… in about six languages. As Belgians do.

And then… oh.

The rain had stopped, but the sky was still thick, grey, and surly. The rest of the world was left with the intensified colors a good dousing can give them.

The Atomium over the Belgian landscape

At certain angles, the Atomium’s spheres and their recently added steel plates blend in with the horizon while still reflecting and distorting it. It’s a beautiful thing – and genuinely, absolutely worth seeing from within. It may be nearly 60 years old, but it’s still capable of inspiring awe.

The Atomium, blending into the horizon

Also of inspiring weird little neighbors.

Mini-Europe from above

May I introduce you to Mini-Europe? Part of a neighboring complex of attractions meant to inspire tantrums in the children of visiting families, Mini-Europe is the centerpiece of a property that also includes a waterpark. Tom and I leaned over and identified the various places represented. We identified the Arc de Triomphe and the Coliseum, but we got stuck on “some airport, I guess?” and “is that a prison?”

I love miniature things, but I don’t understand the desire to pay 14 euros to walk around small buildings that are within a couple hours’ drive or train ride. I contain multitudes.

One last fun fact: the US Pavilion is one of the last buildings left from Expo 58.

The US Pavilion in Brussels, seen from the Atomium

And the US was kind enough to make a building that’s worth seeing, even more than 50 years later. The grandeur at most World Fairs was equaled only by how incredibly temporary and disposable the attractions were generally made to be. (Read The Devil in the White City for some insight into this, or consider the strange missing Ferris wheel axle from the 2004 St. Louis World’s Fair. Things were built to dazzle but not to last for very long, an interesting shared quality for events that were meant to showcase the future.

So it was good to see that the Atomium had company, and that it shared an origin with me. And it was good to see the Atomium at all, to spend part of my last day in Belgium at the first glimmering thing that had attracted me to it. Even if you don’t like novelty and relics as much as I do (a high bar to meet), it’s worth a stop. Particularly if you follow it with Belgian comics and one last beer outing, as we did.

I didn’t love Belgium. But I swooned for the Atomium, and so I ended my trip on a very satisfied note.

*Who am I kidding. There’s also number three: BEER. But more on that another day.

**Other recents: that green inflatable buttplug in Paris, the Santa Claus holding the black buttplug in Rotterdam, Mont St. Michel. I don’t lack.

*** A quick Google tells me that six or seven are the most common answers. Lots of people (quite reasonably) lump Europe and Asia together. Belgium, at least at that point, considered the Americas to be one long, spindly continent too. Fair.

Moments in London

This pub is deep within Kensington, and on that day, on the long walk to fetch my bag, winding through neighborhoods and trying to add fun to an unwanted errand, it looked like a mirage, a beautiful invitation to seriously, no, really, just stop and have a beer, nothing else is that important right now. In the middle of all of these stately homes, this perfectly manicured, flower-edged vision sat. Someone lives next door to that. They can saunter a few steps and sink deep into a pint, in this beautiful yard, among those beautiful houses, whenever they like.

That reminds me of one of my other favorite moments in London. We were taking a walking tour of Westminster, hence some of the earlier pictures, and we walked through an area where lots of politicians live, as it is roughly within the shadow of Parliament. We stopped to look at this light and that house and this former home of a major political party, and I lingered for a moment. A woman was walking in and out of her house, loading up the trunk of her expensive but sensible SUV with kid supplies for what I imagined was a few days away at a grandparent’s house. The pricey car, the much-coveted address, and her ensemble of a tastefully transparent white button-down shirt over a tastefully opaque white bra, matched with impeccably fitting jeans… I wondered what she thought of these tromping groups of tourists wandering up and down the street, and how unlikely it was that she and I had shared a block for a moment at all. She was the picture of a certain kind of assured, casual wealth, far removed from any group of tourists who’d saved up for months to take a trip to London, who found nine pounds for a history-based walking tour of British government to be a very fine deal indeed, who would probably commemorate the outing with the most British of Britishy pub experiences they could find within a few minutes’ walk of where we would leave off, Big Ben towering above us, ringed by the iconic and historic.

I loved the buildings and hearing all they’d been through. But really, I travel because of the unlikely crossing of paths. A politician’s wife and a writer from Seattle. Or, later, a Belgian film archivist. Or a Spanish chef in Brussels. A Russian housekeeper, handling the AirBnB her French artist employer rents out. I love art museums and walking along winding rivers, but what I love the most are the moments that could happen nowhere else, that required both the place and the person to be complete. Victoria Station and me, strange and inverted enough to stand among thousands of people but decide to stare up at a pigeon. That sort of thing.

It’s the situations and the curious alchemy that get me. Here are a few of those moments, none quite enough to merit an individual blog post, but something larger on their own, I think.

Magic hour by the houses of Westminster, with a do not enter sign

I am making a habit of taking pictures of do not enter signs at the magic hour. There are worse things.

I enjoyed the waffle-looking trellises at Westminster Abbey, but I preferred these guys.

Tea at the Cellarium at Westminster Abbey

This does not seem like a formidable amount of food until you get to that second scone. Also: did you know that you can have tea at a building connected to Westminster Abbey? It’s true! None of the guides told us such a thing existed. My smart cousin found this, and I’m so glad she did.

Yes, more magic hour.

A view from the building behind Westminster. The legs of Queen Anne’s stool, gone all rosy in the slowly setting sun.

I made more Harry Potter references to Tom while we were in Versailles than I did in London, for unknowable reasons. But every now and, I saw a ludicrously cute (and sadly closed) tea shop…

Westminster building with excellent windows …or this house, which surely is one gateway to Diagon Alley, and it feels like I should be in a long robe, carrying a broom. One of the things I enjoyed most about those books was how comprehensive a feeling they gave. Even though most of the locations were fiction, there was a reality of atmosphere that elevated all of the books.

And I am a trite American who goes to London and thinks on this no small amount.

hump signs, London

And has a sense of humor with good, sophisticated highs… and wonderful, wallowing lows.

Though sometimes London met me halfway on that. I mean, come on, look at their domain!

But then there are these fine moments, like this indoor pigeon peering down at me from within Victoria Station. I’m sure this dude will be the main character in a children’s book very soon.

And the little girl in that book will live in this house with these wonderful front stairs.

And thus ends my London scrapbook. Next up: tumbling deep into Brussels, with all the good and bad that entails.

P.S. I wrote this post while participating in Hugo House’s 30/30 challenge. I’m writing at least 30 minutes a day all month. I post my favorite sentences of the day on Twitter. Please donate! I’ll keep writing regardless, but you’ll be encouraging me and supporting a great Seattle institution.

The Fear of Opening One’s Mouth and the Difference of a Year

A deviation sign, but in Dutch this time in Bruges

Once upon a time, I felt it necessary to be “correct” all the time. Necessary – and vitally important. To know how to smoothly maneuver any situation, to say some polysyllabic constellation of words to dazzle and open doors. It was my own small way of manipulating the world, a strange skill I learned to rely on early.

I have never considered myself charming, to be clear, but I felt that, through my hyperarticulateness and apologetic tone, I could deal with whatever I had to. I would show people how good I was, and through impressing them or saying the right thing, they would help me solve my problems.

It’s a difficult thing to keep up. Even if you are naturally polysyllabic and hyperarticulate, it takes a lot of energy. It’s not a sustainable tactic.

Mouth and teeth street art in Brussels

I began to walk away from being this way a couple years ago. It changed everything – it lightened my heavy introversion, because being around other people wasn’t such an energy suck. It paved the way to easier and more genuine interactions with everyone from my nearest and dearest to the cashier at QFC. I embraced it, and I opened myself to being awkward (once a life-bending fear) and incomplete. I opened myself to actually being real with people. I congratulated myself on being past this old hindrance. Haven’t I done so well.

In Paris last year, I realized how far that was from the truth. I may not try to dazzle people with my glittering utterances anymore (or not all the time, anyway), but I am made of words, and to have to get by without them left me unprepared for anything – and panicked at times. My first two or three days were spent with at least a mildly elevated heartbeat. What if something happened? What if someone misunderstood me?

Beginner’s mind: it does not come easily to me.

It was easier this year. Because we went to a trilingual country where it’s in everyone’s financial interest to speak at least business English. Because my French is somewhat better than nonexistent now. But mostly, really, because I calmed down. Once upon a time, that the housekeeper who checked us into our Brussels studio didn’t know English would have left me stricken. What if we missed some vital detail? What if we have a question or an emergency later?

What if she doesn’t know how smart I am?

Oh.

Instead, I was able to admire how she was able to pantomime everything from how to work the complicated locks to where the coffee is (and how good it is) to how to work the TV. Her job is to deal with Frenchless foreigners; she performs it beautifully and with good humor. And instead of feeling mortified at being inadequate, I was able to enjoy the particular skill she’s had to cultivate and to marvel at how much I was able to learn without words – and how happy I was to pick out the French I understood.

It was a great welcome to Brussels.

I think what makes a person able to travel and really enjoy it is the skill to laugh at these shortfalls. To enjoy the gaps that exist between people and cultures, but also to celebrate when they’re bridged (perhaps using a mix of French, English, and Spanish, which happened to us at the kaiten-style Spanish tapas restaurant in central Brussels – a good meal, enjoyably delivered by lovely people).

At the end of a trip, yes, I confess I’m glad to return to where I know when the bars close and what’s sold at a pharmacy vs. the grocery store and how to pay the check in a restaurant. But it’s a flush of gratitude, a fluency returned, and there’s pleasure in that too. I know this. I can do this right.

I hope that, one day, beginner’s mind comes naturally to me. I admire it so in other people.

In the meantime, if I can look past my panic in a moment, I can see a crossroads. And I choose, over and over, the path of laughing and laughing, and trusting that most of us just want everything to turn out ok.

Voyage to the 32nd Floor of the Shard

the two-button elevator panel at The Shard in London

We heard there was a bar at the top of the Shard in London.

As the Shard is 87 floors, and the bar is on floor 32, that is not precisely true. But 32 stories up is enough to give you a view of London Bridge, the Thames, and everything else at enough distance that it all looks a little remote and magical. I think that happens at about 20 stories up. You can’t see the people anymore and, especially at night, you only see this glittering, shadowy shape of humanity. I especially like it in a place like London, where people have lived for so very long. Even viewed from an uber-modern glass skyscraper, the shape of more than a thousand years of people is still plain around you.

Even if you’re in a swanky bar made to house the beautiful people, or those who would like to pretend to be them for a bit.

An aside: here’s a suggestion, from me to you, on your trip from the US to Europe. Even if you don’t think you’ll want to go to the fancy afternoon tea or out dancing or whatever people who are better shod than I usually am like to do, bring one mildly formal outfit. A non-casual dress, or a dress shirt and nice pants. Something like that. And, perhaps most crucially, shoes that cannot be mistaken for sneakers in any light, at any time.

I had reclaimed my bag earlier, and I gleefully changed from my train station-bought clothing into my clothes, from my bag of my favorite stuff that I’d packed specifically to feel a little fabulous in Europe. So, despite it having been a day of wandering dustily through Kensington Garden and Hyde Park and then hunting for Sherlock Holmes, I was wearing ballet flats and a dress with a surprisingly subtle print of cats.* One of the few handy things about being a woman who tends femme is that dresses can be fake fancy very easily, even though a lot of dresses are basically large shirts.

Tom and I looked ourselves over to see if we’d have any concerns with a possible dress code at a possible fancy bar. The sole questionable element was his shoes, which were far from the big white trainers of nightmare Americans, but still had laces. “Just stand behind my bag,” I said. “You’ll look all chivalrous, carrying my bag, and it’ll be FINE.”

After the days of wayward bag, I felt like the universe owed me a break. I wanted to have an elaborate, overpriced cocktail in a bar with a view with someone I loved. That was all.

But the real gravity of all of this was unknown to us at this point. At the entrance to the elevator pictured above, a man and a woman in black suits and Secret Service-style earpieces were standing guard, and their entire purpose seemed to be to conduct a sartorial review of everyone who entered. I, in my girly camouflage, barely merited a glance. But they saw right past my incredibly clever bag ruse and promptly began a surprisingly involved debate about said shoes.

“I don’t know if they’re going to allow it.”

“They’re kind of like trainers.”

“But different.”

“But you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s leave it to them up there then.” And, just like that, we were directed to an unknown higher authority. A tribunal for overly comfy Americans.

That is how we ended up, just the two of us, in the elevator with two stops. We giddily talked about what might await is up there and how we might be judged.

It was, we agreed, a lot of to-do over cocktails.

Another aside, after so many uninterrupted paragraphs: it is both good content design and my own preference to fill posts like this with lots of pictures. This one is an exception (though not the only one) for a few reasons. First, as you might guess by the conversation above, it wasn’t a situation where brandishing a camera felt either smart or natural. I was too busy wondering if we were going to get to do the thing we’d shaped the later part of our night around. Second, once we got into the elevator and emerged into the dramatically lit hallway on floor 32, I just wanted to… be.

When I was in Paris last summer, I deliberately didn’t buy a camera to bring with me. I took occasional pictures with my old iPhone 4, and I very occasionally borrowed Tom’s camera to take a picture of something especially good, but mostly I wanted to be in the moment, and I chose to observe and record only in my journal.** I prefer to take pictures now, because of this blog and because it’s fun, but now and then, such as when Tom and I emerged from the elevator onto a frosted glass balcony that was empty except for a beefy guy in the same doorman drag as his ground floor counterparts, I prefer to just… be.

We began to ask about the shoe matter, knowing that this solo sentinel would also see right past my clever bag ruse. He stopped us.

“Aqua Shard is closed.”

Now that my bag was back and the need for compartmentalizing had passed, I was able to fully feel things like disappointment and frustration again. My stomach twisted; it was our last night in London before going to Brussels, and our second time attempting the bar at the Shard. We’d come by the night before, only to find a series of closed, darkened doors.

He considered this for a long moment. “Oblix is open, though.”

I stared at him, waiting for clarification. Finally, I asked, “What’s Oblix?”

“Bar around the corner.” He pointed past us at a hallway lined in textured cement that gathered the light from the LED “candles” embedded along the floor to create millions of thin, dancing shadows. “You’re good for there.”

And we were. We checked my bag with two extremely dressed-up young women and walked down a long, L-shaped hall, to…

…the bar.

20-plus stories of distance renders most things observed more magical than they are. But that, plus night, plus floor-to-ceiling windows, and suddenly just the act of seeing becomes something special and rare. Even though we were sharing the bar with about 30 of our closest friends and a jazz band, it felt like secret access, like the perfect, picturesque end to a weird, frantic, fun three days in London.

We settled onto a loveseat, next to one of the overpowering windows, London Bridge and the Thames like miniatures next to us. Finally, suddenly, it seemed like a long, odd, good day was going to have a sweet ending.

Oblix is serious about their cocktails, to the point of being a little fun and easy to tweak. For instance, here is what Tom ordered:

The Betsy Theory

One of the many legends told of the origins of the ‘cocktail’ is
that of Betsy Flanagan: In the 1700s, during the English occupation
of northern Virginia, she had a tavern frequented by French and American
soldiers. Betsy was renowned for her alcoholic concoctions. To show her
support of the rebels, she decorated her drinks using tail feathers from
roosters, stolen from the British Commissary. The name cocktail was
born as a drink for rebels and a cry for freedom by the oppressed.
As the actual ingredients she used are unknown, the
Betsy Theory is inspired by her story.

Bulleit Rye Whisky,
tobacco, cacao liqueur
with mint & peach bitters

Crafted as a julep and served in a silver plated cup over carved ice,
garnished with the feather of a cock’s tail.

I will point out that there was no feather to be seen. Indeed, when I looked up the menu, I wondered if perhaps they’d since removed the feather reference. No; still there. It’s a good drink (though curiously free of tobacco flavor), and worth it just for the spectacle of the cup. I ordered something with egg white. If it’s possible, I always order something with egg white. It’s an approach to life I recommend adopting, if you have the slightest inclination.

And then, we… sat. We canoodled, I suppose, because that’s what you do when you’re on a sofa overlooking one of the most famous cities in the world, when you’re a couple days into a trip you’re thrilled about, and when, once again in possession of your toothbrush and boots, you’re able to think that things might just work out after all.

We stumbled down a while later, caught the last train back to my friends’ flat in Balham, and woke up the next morning to wind our way under the Channel to Belgium.

*That’s right.

**Which I feel was the right decision in the moment, but sometimes I think of the street art I saw in Montmartre and wish so badly I’d recorded it, because I’m sure it’s turned over by now, and what I loved has been replaced. I won’t make the same mistake next month.***

***That’s right. 😀

Baker Street Is Made of Misdirection

Sherlock Holmes tile in the Baker Street Underground station

It starts in the Baker Street Underground station.

221b Baker Street sticker on the back of a street sign You get another quiet little hint once you emerge on the street.

Sherlock Holmes cafe sign on Baker Street The surrounding businesses are only too glad to contribute clues.

Sherlock Holmes has an official dry cleaner, it seems. Seems legit. You don’t want to wash your deerstalker on permanent press, after all.

Sherlock Holmes cafe and beverages Baker Street is basically a celebration of finite copyright.

221b Museum sign on Baker Street But could we be getting close?

The Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street Sort of. But that isn’t 221b.

There doesn’t seem to be one.

This is the building that stands between 219 and 231.

The possible 221b Baker Street?

Curiously unnumbered.

What must it be like to pay millions of pounds to live at what may be one of the most famous addresses in the world… but to prefer to keep it on the DL? Is it a curious pride, or just irritation that the building in your price range with the amenities you like happens to have literary significance that keeps tourists gawping at your front door all year round?

The woman in this story probably has some idea.

This series of pictures, and this weird, unplanned little investigation, brought to you by fish and chips restaurants with a BYOB policy and a Tesco in easy walking distance.

London’s Albert Memorial: Grief as Religion

A fuller view of the Albert Memorial in London

We approached the Albert Memorial unknowing, towing my recently rescued bag on a scenic walk through Kensington Gardens. I was tired and relieved, and so I didn’t see signs for the memorial before I saw it beginning to tower above the trees before us. I wondered what saint or martyr or other person fallen in defense of the common good it commemorated.

But it wasn’t a glory to god or a representative. Instead, it was an expression of grief.

Part of the Albert Memorial in London

What is it like to have a larger part of the riches of the world available to make your grief solid? How is your grief shaped if your every dictate must be heard and obeyed?

Part of the Albert Memorial in London

Queen Victoria’s legacy suggests it doesn’t help it digest. The memorial was 14 years in the making.

London's Albert Memorial from behind But if you could write large the greatest hurt of your life, with a dominating part of the earth’s resources behind you, can you say for sure that you wouldn’t? If you could make your love a permanent, towering part of the landscape of one of the most famous parks on earth, would you be able to resist?

I bear my hurts quietly, but I can’t say no.

I Wish I’d Eaten More at London’s Camden Market

Vegetarian Prosciutto sign at Camden Market

In my memory, Tom downplayed it when we were planning what to do with our limited time in London. “Oh, while we’re at Camden Market, there’s a food market we should check out,” he said. “I really liked it. Lots of stuff there.”

Like with theater, live music, and restaurants that aren’t centered around steak, travel is an area where I take very little prodding to be interested. “I heard it was good-” you might start to say to me, only to find yourself interrupted by a quick, “Right, when can you go? Next week? How’s Thursday?” From day to day, I’m discriminating about what I occupy myself with, and I think often of my own mortality when deciding if something is actually worth my time. But by trusting the suggestions of friends and other people I love, I see stuff that my introvert self might otherwise skip, opting instead to read in bed for another couple of hours.

So my response was a quick “sure” with little elaboration. One more entry for the list. Sounds good, let’s do things. Fewer questions mean more surprises later.

I first went to Camden Market with my mom during the very brief time we were there in late June 2000. Our life in Florida had not yet happened, so my mom was still pretty easily freaked out by anything reading as “weird.” These same things were basically my nourishment throughout high school, so it was an interesting time for us to know each other, and an even more interesting time for us to be travel companions in Europe. (A very strange walk through Amsterdam’s red light district came a couple weeks later as the trip was coming to an end. A lot of tense silence and nervous giggling.)

We got there just before the end of the business day, and I remember the closing stalls having an even fuller rainbow of Dr. Marten’s than they do now. I managed to score a £5 green glass necklace that is still among my favorites, now a relic of a kinder exchange rate. We had time for just a few Mohawks and a couple aggressive panhandlers with accents our Midwestern ears could barely understand, and then we were back on the tube, headed back to central London to soak up what we could before getting swept up onto our multicity bus tour.

So I was eager to see it again and more fully, and the promise of FOOD* was just extra enticement.

If I had not spent part of the previous evening frantically looking for ok-enough clothes in a train station-slash-shopping center (the better to dress myself in the absence of my checked bag), I might’ve been more inclined to pick up a cute, cheap dress or dig deeper into the vintagey t-shirts. But that bird had flown, and so I half-assedly windowshopped until we got to the food market.

I think I need to go full-on h1 for this. Stay with me.

HOLY SHIT

Ok, so. Here is a partial list of what we found there, in an almost unbearably quaint, almost unbearably stuffed space full of food stalls.

Massive pans of paella
Philly cheesesteaks**
Falafel with ingredients plucked from a dozen beautifully arrayed wooden bowls
Curry***
Pierogi
Fish sandwiches
Everything ever, possibly

I say that because, due to crowds and my own hunger, I had to give up aggressive exploration after a bit and pick… something.

Fish sandwich stand at Camden Market with "shrimp" in many languages

I chose wisely.

Camden Market menu with fish sandwiches listed

I opted for the Trout Pout, and I spent several entranced minutes watching the fellow running the stand meticulously put together my lunch. The fish went on a small stove with raised grill lines, the fries were fried again to be fresh and warm, and a perfect little cucumber salad was nestled next to the sandwich. He was so deliberate and so careful, and the result of his care was one of my best-ever sandwich experiences.

An unremarkable-looking but delicious trout sandwich from Camden Market

I know this image doesn’t represent the depth of sandwich perfection that went on here, but I do not care. There needs to be a public record of it, and so: this picture.

I sat on a wooden trunk to the side, as far away from the thick crowd as I could get, while Tom wandered solo, sifting through dozens of options unavailable to my pescetarian self. I closed my eyes to enjoy the many layers of my sandwich, garnished by the hum of unfamiliar accents and wafts of food smell representing a fairly large part of the planet.

Tom opted for the falafel. He chose wisely, as the stand basically looked like Falafel in Heaven. I mean, come on.

A beautiful falafel stand at Camden Market

To finish, he got coffee made of beans that were ROASTED BEFORE OUR VERY EYES in a tiny, tiny skillet.

Single-serving bean roasting at Camden Market

We got a variety sack of tablet to go. I had heard of tablet, but all I knew was that it was something between fudge and cake. It’s crumbly and sweet and pleasant… and they sell grab bags that are far too large for two humans to finish in any reasonable amount of time. But it was worth it for the experience – and to reward the good souls that put together this freakishly perfect little tablet stand.

A pile of tablet at Camden Market

Here’s what I would do differently on a day like that, knowing what I know now.

I would not have eaten breakfast at a coffee shop. I would have had the smallest morning snack possible, just enough to keep myself from getting a headache.
I would instead have breakfast at said food stalls, have a good wander and buy something unnecessary, and then come back and have lunch at said food stalls.
I might find something else to do in the area, allowing me to return to have a third meal at said food stalls.
I would have organized a tag-team style plan, wherein Tom and I could have shared three dishes at each go around and thus tried more things.

However, I did fine. I wouldn’t trade the experience of that perfect, perfect sandwich for anything.

Although I wouldn’t have minded augmenting it with this, had I the belly capacity.

Hola Paella at Camden Market

Adios, three-foot-diameter paella pan. I will see you again someday.

*GLORIOUS FOOD

**My companion, naturally, had some dubiousness about this, and so opted to try something he was more likely to enjoy.

***Duh

P.S. This post is brought to you by Hugo House’s 30/30 challenge. I’m writing at least 30 minutes a day all month. I post my favorite sentences of the day on Twitter. Please donate! I’ll keep writing regardless, but you’ll be encouraging me and supporting a great Seattle institution.

The Tube Speaks to Me: Subway Posters of London

I am not a copywriter, but I am a student of language, particularly the stuff that conducts people through everyday life.* So it is one of my favorite things, when traveling in a country that mostly speaks the same language that I do**, to see how the culture talks to its people. And one of my favorite ways of gauging this is through the way that a country’s ads try to reach and manipulate people.

The London Underground commissioned a cartoonist with an achingly cute style to illustrate some common subway travails and how one might deal with them. (My friend who lives there, however, did not think very highly of being told in doggerel verse how to handle being a person of the most minimal self-responsibility.) I love the art, even if I do think it’s unfortunate that people were getting dehydrated on the tube often enough that a budget was created to be remind them that water is helpful.***

On a hot train, Alice felt so low / Faint and shaky from head to toe / She thought, "Next time I oughta / take along a bottle of water."

I also think that ‘stache here is being extremely brave. I’d like to think I’d be a super helpful person in this situation, but it’s not just a culture of familial ties that cause things like this to happen.

While we were there, there was also a series of posters entreating subway riders to investigate the exotic within the city’s boundaries.

If we hadn’t had such a short stay in London (marred by a wayward bag, courtesy of British Airways), I might’ve been swayed by this one.

Cartoon guy in red, hugging an alpaca for all it's worth

I’ve actually touched an alpaca, and I know it’s not quite like this, but I still want to believe it’s like nestling your eager little face into a nest of clouds.

And then there’s this one, which seems like it may be a trap. I’ve seen Torchwood. I know better than this.

London wants you to board a UFO. Tell London no thanks.

In researching this poster series, I found that you can buy these alongside the many, many other posters sold through the London Transport Museum. Meaning that, if I can free up a tiny bit of wall space, I very well may end up looking at this every day. By the way, if someone can tell me what an iconic Denver dinner would entail, I would be very interested to hear it.

The subways are lined with ads, of course. Posters for music festivals with headliners I’d never heard of, ads featuring celebrities I was only vaguely familiar with due to the lingering aftereffects of being a teenage anglophile, and brands that seem too well represented for them to have stayed so firmly on the other side of the Atlantic. I was content to let them blur into noise, taking them in as I could. I only took a picture of this one.

This freaky ad comparing a bleeding eye to gums that bleed when you brush your teeth. Augh!

And to that copywriter, I just say… point. I have no argument there.

Which is, I suppose, successful advertising wherever you are.

*One title for this: UX writer. Need one? Talk to me!

**And it’s a thing I lose out on when I travel in a country where English isn’t the first or second or third language used in official communications. I have a real love of handwritten signs on store doors and bus stop closure signs. However, it does force me to focus on other things, and I get a different picture of a place because of it.

***Particularly while on a continent that so thoroughly eschews the public water fountain. But that’s a tale for another day.

A Walk in the Wood: In Which I Go to the Folsom Street Fair

There are no pictures with this post.

It’s strange, I realize. Because if you go outside, particularly in smartphone-saturated San Francisco, and you are wearing an equestrian bit, or a sheer bodysuit, or nothing at all, you’re as good as consenting to have your ass and all the rest of you put on the internet.

But there are things I can’t participate in, and that’s one of them. For those people brave or horny or otherwise sufficiently compelled to go outside in full fetish gear, I will grant them one less picture on the internet, one less bit of exposure to anyone who cares to do a wanky little Google search.

Sorry, exhibitionists.

I’ve wanted to go to the Folsom Street Fair for some years now, probably dating back to my late nights of surreptitiously watching Real Sex and other HBO-sponsored contributions to my early sexual education. And finally, this year, I did. I didn’t dress up (except making a point to wear my traditional stompy boots), and I didn’t go to any parties. I just wandered and watched and stood in awe.

And saw penises. Oh yes, the penises, the infinite penises. Penises au naturale, penises minus hair and with tattoos and piercings, penises held wobbly and at half-mast by rubber rings and metal rings and little leather collars. Penises dangling under the bottoms of shirts like fleshy little pendulums, penises poking like inquisitive mice through the flies of boxers and sensible khakis*, penises bobbing up and down on naked dancers.

Penises.

One I did not see: that of the 60-something man who faced away from me, hands proudly on bare hips, standing astride on these, using the easy sway of them to wave his penis like a metronome, like a languorous dowsing rod. I saw the orthopedic shoes and the knee socks atop them, the relaxed ass, but not the front.

And that is ok.

Beyond that, it was like a prom where sex is guaranteed at the end, and often during, all the horny people of the greater San Francisco area and beyond decked out in their fetishy best. An equestrian store’s worth of harnesses across shoulders narrow and wide, hairy and freckled and tattooed and not.** Horse tails, hooves, and dozens of eerie leather dog masks. Adult babies in playpens and furries posing for pictures. A full, delirious rainbow of brightly printed briefs. A parade of sexuality largely unconcerned with a cis-woman in her early 30s. And so I was left to watch – its own proclivity, of course.

When I happened by one stage, I was entranced by the rope play being demonstrated, the wide grin of the woman being tied up as her binder pushed her up toward the cheering crowd. Immediately after, I learned I can still be shocked, even to the point of gagging quietly in a crowd, as I did when I saw a woman pee, spitefully and delightedly, into the mouth of the man beneath her. I looked away, some.

And then: 24 ounces of beer, consumed fairly quickly. It was needed.

The rest? A dancer, engaging in my favorite kind of deeply demented, boner-confusing burlesque, stripping down to a rainbow-striped merkin that matched her wig, tail, and unicorn horn. A suspension act that lasted a glorious 45 seconds before something snapped, sending the performer a couple feet to the ground and the audience’s hands to their mouths. A beautiful pole-dancing couple, cups and bowls decorated with artful carvings of sex, a police officer who informed people that they didn’t have to cover their nipples with tape today. Today, it was cool to show everything, nips and all.

But most of all, Folsom was the inside brought outside. People bedecking themselves in the stuff of fantasy, unbothered by the fear of exposure, happy to be among the leashed and the leaders, their desires brought to the surface and the street, and paraded around for just one day.

Well, just one day of synchronized parading, anyway. Folsom Street exists at all times, as do sex parties, as do well-trafficked St. Andrew’s crosses and whips and people glad to wield and yield.

Dan Savage has called Halloween Straight Pride, the day that heterosexuals take to wander around with cleavage and bare skin and deliberate, grinning intent. Folsom combines the two, resulting in one big, loud, delightfully overwhelming cacophony of lust, and the knowledge that most anything that can be asked could be answered nearby by someone, by multiple someones, by a line of eagerly waiting someones. It’s always true, to a point, particularly in cities like San Francisco or New York or Seattle, but on that day, like candy doled out to trick-or-treaters, it’s all nearby and offered up, consensual and celebrated.

It may not be for you, but it’s good that it’s there for all of us. For every Texas that outlaws sex toys and every too-recently overturned sodomy law, there’s a man strutting a bit as he adjusts the thin suspenders keeping his tiny underwear in place, and a smirking woman leading her two partners with shining leather leashes, and a woman with impeccably tattooed breasts resting architecturally atop an engineering feat of a corset. The middle can exist because of what brackets it. And the edges need to be pushed, adjusted, redefined, and reexamined now and then to mean anything.

And so it goes, once a year in San Francisco. And I’m glad I got to witness it.

*Flyfishing.

**My favorite: pink shoulder straps that connected across a wide back piece featuring… Hello Kitty. Beautiful, sir.