Look on my works...

When I went to sleep last night, I couldn’t hear something and it shocked me. What I couldn’t hear was the hubbub, the din, the buzz of a normal big city. Going to sleep in New York, for me at least, is always a chore because it truly never sleeps. I don’t think London really sleeps either, it’s simply more polite about its after-hour habit. From my hostel, you can’t hear traffic or many carousers—sound-wise, it’s a good place to go to sleep.

Nor is this a phenomenon unique to my hostel. Several residential neighborhoods, I’ve noticed, share this characteristic. Both Hyde and St. James Park possess it too. This sense of auditory sanity is something unique about London amongst the metropolises I’ve visited. In fact, between the islands of silence and the stately houses, I think London’s residential districts are the nicest of any big city I’ve gone to.

I spent a lot of time in the parks today, hanging out, so I really noticed it, having spent a lot of time around Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, otherwise known as Tourist Hubs A and B.

The first thing I did when I entered was visiting Kensington Palace. I wasn’t really particularly interested in it, but it’d been on so many signs that my curiosity was piqued. It’s a nice enough building, but Palace seems a bit of a misnomer. “Summer House” seems a better name for it; it inspires images of stock footage from English movies of the countryside (you know, the carriages, the white dresses, the breeches, the croquet games, the parlor banter, etc.). Off to the side of the Palace is an area walled off by trees, but with arches cut into them. I peeked in one and saw a beautiful yet small garden with a riot of purples, blues, reds and greens. Apparently others agreed with me; one man smoked and just allowed his eyes to drift over it while a young girl tried use bread to attract the attention of a duck that’d wandered in.

After that, I had to see another attraction that practically every sign had pointed out: the Diana Memorial Fountain. No matter what corner of the park you enter from, there’s always a sign pointing you towards that fountain. This is the only attraction that receives this treatment; you practically have to be right on top of Speaker’s Corner before a sign will direct you to it, for example. So I set off following the signs to the Fountain.

After a nice walk, I made it there. I almost passed it before I realized that this was it. It’s not very distinctive. There were neither throngs surrounding it nor wreaths laid, which was doubly shocking. First, it seems to me that Diana still gets a lot of attention: Kensington Palace is holding an exhibition in memory of Diana and practically every stand that sells postcards sells postcards in the shapes of QEII’s face, Charles’ face, and Diana’s face (and never just one of the three). The other shocking thing about the lack of popular attention is that practically every monument in London, from a Breakdancing record cover (without vinyl) at the Gandhi memorial to wreaths of roses at the innumerable military memorials, has enjoyed someone’s commemoration.

Besides the lack of popular attention, the memorial itself is not particularly memorial-like. It is an artificial island with a small tree set off-center, and a winding stone path in the middle of the island. The artificiality is achieved via moat, which gurgles with water. It has a serene feel, crucial to the monumental feel, but the onlooker has no idea who is supposed to be remembered or saluted. Overall, it was a very strange feeling, considering that I pessimistically expected more, I don’t know, remembrance.

I got what I was expecting at Harrods. Why did I go? Well, for cheap humor, of course. For example, while we’re on the subject of Diana, there is a Diana memorial in Harrods on the basement floor. It’s her and some dude whose name also begins with a ‘D’ (not being versed in the Diana legend, I couldn’t tell you who he was or why he was there). It’s like a gravestone, really, on a sort of greenish marble. Each person’s picture is inset in the stone, and each picture has a cheap airbrushed quality, as if some intern did it the night before on Photoshop. Below each picture, each of their names is etched in gold lettering. While I watched from the escalator, about five grinning people took pictures in front of it. They were not part of a group.

But wait, that’s not it for small amusements! Their motto, as I have mentioned earlier, is “Timeless Luxury.” What I did not realize earlier is this: ironically, this motto is set to expire on October 20th.

Their food emporium, stocked with crepes at fifteen pounds and sausage at ten pounds, also carries Krispie Kremes. This strikes me as very appropriate: Harrods is nothing but obvious in its execution, and Krispie Kremes are perhaps the most obvious American food I can think of, in the same way as Pamela Anderson is the most obvious American woman and Carlos Mencia is the most obvious American comedian: all of these things share the quality of shouting from the rooftops, “_____ is WHAT I’M ABOUT” in a way that degrades the whole point of _____ (where ____ is luxury, sugar, breasts, and offensive humor, respectively).

Harrods also has a little known anger department that seeks to offend literate people. As you travel up the Egyptian room escalator (there is an Egyptian room, for no apparent reason, as it makes no effort to sell you anything even vaguely Egyptian), you can see the kitschy Egyptian decorations: mummies, hieroglyphics, and the like. But, if you look closely, you can see a quotation: “MY NAME IS OZYMANDIAS, KING OF KINGS. LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!” I became very angry when I saw this. The point of the poem is to describe the impermanence of all things, and ways the worthlessness of accumulation of “mighty works.” Which, of course, is antithetical to the whole point of a luxury chain like Harrods. This means one of a few things happened.

Either:
a) Someone just saw the first two lines of the poem, liked it and didn’t bother to read the rest.
b) Someone read the whole poem and didn’t get it
c) Someone read the whole poem, got it and believes that Harrods is an exception
d) Someone read the whole poem, got it and is joking
I’m hoping for d), but not optimistic that this is the case. I suspect a) or b) and would really be disgusted with c).

After Harrods provided me with cheap humor and cheap cookies (seriously the only thing that’s underpriced in the whole store), I ate lunch in Hyde Park, hung around for a few hours, then had dinner in Covent Garden. Covent Garden is a notable yet tucked-away area. It is a square in which a market has sprung up in the center. I had dinner in an outdoor café while I watched street performers and watched people watch street performers. On the whole, London’s street performers are pretty good, but there was one who was just torturous to listen to. Listen, buddy, you’re probably not reading this, but if this somehow falls into your hands: if you can’t hit the high notes on “She Loves You” by the Beatles, then you definitely shouldn’t turn it into a slow-tempo song. Thank god there was a dueling musician playing good, if cheesy songs (“The First Cut is the Deepest” is a representative song).

Well, that’s more or less it for London. Flight leaves for Paris at 2:50 PM tomorrow.

*****

Ah, but some vignettes first.

*****

I’ve figured out a pecking order, in terms of affections, for the park: swans first; just below, white geese; just below, ducks; way below, gray geese; no one cares/hates: pigeons and crows. If the herons and cormorants gave a shit, they’d be right in that thing. And yes, the pun at the beginning was very intentional.

****

There’s a really cool tree in the park. It is gnarled and overgrown, so much so that its branches go up first, then down. It has almost certainly been sculpted to achieve this effect, but it is nonetheless impressive to see a tree that is a literal umbrella. There are portals cut into the branches to make the inside of the tree accessible. Otherwise, the ground-touching branches would be impenetrable.

*****

Back to the pigeons: the London pigeons are very distinctive for reasons that I’ve mentioned earlier. Besides these reasons, they also have a habit of withdrawing their heads into their body, almost like a turtle going into its shell.

****

Well, Maddy’s back in the news today, and competing valiantly with the Chelsea manager’s firing. Here’s what I’ve gathered: Maddy was abducted and killed. Also, young, white and cute. But I’ve already mentioned she’s back in the news—god, I should stop being so redundant. Anyway, so there’s apparently a ‘chilling new theory’ from the dad, and authorities are suspicious of ‘a six-hour unexplained gap from the mother.’

The other big story, the fired Chelsea manager inspires more meta-media interest. All the papers continued to carry the news as front-page stuff. One, the Evening Standard, devoted a quarter of the paper to his sacking. Each page had a banner that said, “Thanks for the memories, Jose” (that was his name, Jose Mourinho), with a circle at the end of the banner containing his face and the dates of his tenure. You’d have thought he was dead. By comparison, the Bay Area papers devoted similar space to Bill Walsh’s death, and he was one of the greatest innovators the game of American football has ever known. This is just to give you a sense of the proportion of soccer’s hold.

****

Londoners jogging is the oddest thing. They seem to have a similar style. That style could best be described as a manikin running.