A relatively uneventful day, since I am supposed to be getting down to the business of, you know, starting a dissertation. Whatever that's supposed to mean. The biggest pragmatic difference, so far as I can tell, is that you're usually expected to have read the whole book of secondary scholarship or criticism rather than just the relevant bits. Additionally, I've been spending whole hours in mute confusion looking through the British Library's catalogues only to realize: I don't have to be looking a a manuscript every day. I will look at manuscripts or rare books on many days, of course, but I don't need to justify my presence here by looking at archival material when it would be more productive for me to work elsewhere, on other things. Marx may have written Gundrisse in the British Library, but he didn't have a laptop, the internet, or access to other nice libraries with open shelves.
Anyway, my sole excursion for the day yesterday was a trip up and down Charing Cross Road, looking for a used copy of Augustine's Confessions. Used bookstores, in particular, can be really good for the Loeb classics (I know, I know, I'm never going to become a decent Latinist using facing page translations) but they (the used Loebs) tend to travel in packs and so things tend to be rather hit or miss. Yesterday was full of misses: not one of the maybe half dozen secondhand bookstores I stopped in had a copy of the Loeb or any other edition. I did find a fantastic selection of new copies at Foyle's, but the prices (11.99 for the Penguin classics edition!) gave me sticker shock and I demurred. The better translations of the Confessions, as well as the Oxford edition of the Latin text, are all available online for free.
Yesterday evening I attended "pub quiz" in the bar in the basement of the hall. The procedings will be familiar to fans of any of the innumerable American variations on the basic theme; the notable difference here being that the prizes included a bottle of champagne and a package of milk (true story). Teams were assigned at random, and mine included students, mostly other postgrads, from the US, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and Luxembourg, a definite asset as the questions were deliberately global in scope. The desire to be a smart-ass (e.g., "What is the tallest mountain in New Zeeland?" "Mt. Doom.") and also, oddly, to provide an answer to every question in a picture round, seems to be universal, even if it means guessing that a photo of what turned out to be the new president of South Africa was "Martha Stewart". Our team performed tolerably well, but not so well as to win either bubbly or milk. Disappointingly, there was no bonus round at the end.
My explorations of British confectionary continue, now with the purchase of a mint Aero bar. It tasted like sugary confusion. The packaging promised "bubbles" within; I have to say I was disappointed, as I suppose I was hoping for a "pop" rather than the "melt" that the packaging suggests. Apparently the filling is also mint chocolate flavored rather than simply mint flavored. Curious stuff.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Day 5
(I am writing these all out of order.)
Up in a timely manner to meet with someone in the cafe at the British Library. Scrambled eggs do not seem to be in the repetoire of the breakfast chef in the kitchen, which both disappoints and surprises me, since they were a hallmark of the breakfast experience in my college dinning hall. My hardboiled egg was burnt, which I did not know was possible, and yet. (I shouldn't complain too much, though. The food, and the accommodations as a whole are quite decent. And I could rather get used to having someone else cook for me mornings and evenings.)
I've been trying to meet other postgrads in the hall, mostly by looking around at mealtimes and seeing who's eating alone and looks older than about nineteen. Yesterday, I met a nice political theory grad student, who invited me out later that evening. But more of this anon.
My meeting went well, quite well, in fact, as it was with the only other person I've yet met who's read one of the texts that I think will be quite important to the chapter of the dissertation I plan to write during the second half of my time here (the preface to Thomas Berthelet's 1532 edition of Gower's Confessio Amantis, if you really want to know). I've been preaching its virtues in several quarters for awhile now, but it was fantastic to talk about it a little with someone who's also given it some time and attention. We met in the cafe in the main lobby of the library, which has the same terrifying scholarly hum as the hallways at a conference, the slightly hectic awareness that there is knowledge, both scholarly and social, all around you, and it is just out of your grasp, and if you only knew where to look, you could find just what you needed. At least that was my impression. The coffee was better than that in the hall, certainly.
Anyway, the meeting went so well that I decided to take the afternoon off from weightier affairs and walk up to Camden Town. This I did, and after briefly loosing my way (whenever I get lost, I seem to wind up on Tottenham Court Road, which is never exactly where I want to be, except Muji is there and I still want to buy everything they've got and live a calm, well-organized, and beautifully turned-out life), I was delighted to discover a whole slew of charity shops, discount stores, and cheap Thai restaurants up near Mornington Crescent. It was good to get out of Bloomsbury and central London a bit; nice as they are (and they are very nice, on the whole) they're neither places I could afford to live if I were hear on a permanent basis, nor places I would choose to live. I mean, cheap ethnic food and dive bars are important, no?
Further north is Camden Market, which is sort of like St. Mark's Place writ large. Like St. Mark's Place, my initial reaction is a bit of love-hate. It was crowded, there were rather a lot of tourists and/or kids skipping school (I mean, the streets were packed), and the cute, unique-looking dress I saw for sale in one shop or stall would inevitably also be for sale at two other stores down the same block. It's basically a commercial stretch, full of cheaply made goods aimed largely at the tourist or teenager with a little money in his pocket looking to bring home something at least mildly titillating. At the same time, though, there's something pretty adorable and awesome about the stick-it-to-the-man defiance of a square mile full of girls with pink hair, boys with mohawks and studded jackets, and more EGL knock-offs and second hand Doc Martens than Hot Topic could ever dream of. And to be fair, unsure of my bearings, I stuck only to the main thoroughfare, and even there I saw some neat handmade things-- a store selling felted bead necklaces and handwraps sticks in my mind-- and had a truly delicious slice of pizza (made by real Italians! the sign proclaims) for only a pound. You know, the sixteen year old me was just jumping for joy and it was hard to walk away from the stall selling a fantastic array of printed stockings. I will be back. I turned round at a restaurant called Gilgamesh, which promises to reward a return visit with a fantastically gaudy interior, though I don't know anything about the food, and headed back south. On my way back, I stopped at a 99p store (where they had things like Colgate toothpaste and Nivea face wash!) and also finally bought something at Argos (an alarm clock, sigh). American mind still broken.
Back at the hall, I had dinner with a Sketchy McSketcherton who told me he could tell I was a hipster by the way I walked (!?) and who wanted to get a drink later; I demurred and went out to meet the political theorist and some friends at a pub near the hall. Woud up, against expectations really, having a great time, meeting a bunch of Canadians, and proving I can still hold my own in a conversation about Hannah Arendt. I also spent a lot of time talking with a terrifically nice fixed-gear enthusiast from Montreal, who has offered to get me set up with a cheap ride via the London equivalent of the Bike Church, and invited me to Brick Lane on Sunday (e.g., tomorrow) to watch Bike Polo, which is apparently just what it sounds like. Given this option, or the alternative, which is staying in and re-reading Augustine's Confessiones, I think the choice is clear.
Up in a timely manner to meet with someone in the cafe at the British Library. Scrambled eggs do not seem to be in the repetoire of the breakfast chef in the kitchen, which both disappoints and surprises me, since they were a hallmark of the breakfast experience in my college dinning hall. My hardboiled egg was burnt, which I did not know was possible, and yet. (I shouldn't complain too much, though. The food, and the accommodations as a whole are quite decent. And I could rather get used to having someone else cook for me mornings and evenings.)
I've been trying to meet other postgrads in the hall, mostly by looking around at mealtimes and seeing who's eating alone and looks older than about nineteen. Yesterday, I met a nice political theory grad student, who invited me out later that evening. But more of this anon.
My meeting went well, quite well, in fact, as it was with the only other person I've yet met who's read one of the texts that I think will be quite important to the chapter of the dissertation I plan to write during the second half of my time here (the preface to Thomas Berthelet's 1532 edition of Gower's Confessio Amantis, if you really want to know). I've been preaching its virtues in several quarters for awhile now, but it was fantastic to talk about it a little with someone who's also given it some time and attention. We met in the cafe in the main lobby of the library, which has the same terrifying scholarly hum as the hallways at a conference, the slightly hectic awareness that there is knowledge, both scholarly and social, all around you, and it is just out of your grasp, and if you only knew where to look, you could find just what you needed. At least that was my impression. The coffee was better than that in the hall, certainly.
Anyway, the meeting went so well that I decided to take the afternoon off from weightier affairs and walk up to Camden Town. This I did, and after briefly loosing my way (whenever I get lost, I seem to wind up on Tottenham Court Road, which is never exactly where I want to be, except Muji is there and I still want to buy everything they've got and live a calm, well-organized, and beautifully turned-out life), I was delighted to discover a whole slew of charity shops, discount stores, and cheap Thai restaurants up near Mornington Crescent. It was good to get out of Bloomsbury and central London a bit; nice as they are (and they are very nice, on the whole) they're neither places I could afford to live if I were hear on a permanent basis, nor places I would choose to live. I mean, cheap ethnic food and dive bars are important, no?
Further north is Camden Market, which is sort of like St. Mark's Place writ large. Like St. Mark's Place, my initial reaction is a bit of love-hate. It was crowded, there were rather a lot of tourists and/or kids skipping school (I mean, the streets were packed), and the cute, unique-looking dress I saw for sale in one shop or stall would inevitably also be for sale at two other stores down the same block. It's basically a commercial stretch, full of cheaply made goods aimed largely at the tourist or teenager with a little money in his pocket looking to bring home something at least mildly titillating. At the same time, though, there's something pretty adorable and awesome about the stick-it-to-the-man defiance of a square mile full of girls with pink hair, boys with mohawks and studded jackets, and more EGL knock-offs and second hand Doc Martens than Hot Topic could ever dream of. And to be fair, unsure of my bearings, I stuck only to the main thoroughfare, and even there I saw some neat handmade things-- a store selling felted bead necklaces and handwraps sticks in my mind-- and had a truly delicious slice of pizza (made by real Italians! the sign proclaims) for only a pound. You know, the sixteen year old me was just jumping for joy and it was hard to walk away from the stall selling a fantastic array of printed stockings. I will be back. I turned round at a restaurant called Gilgamesh, which promises to reward a return visit with a fantastically gaudy interior, though I don't know anything about the food, and headed back south. On my way back, I stopped at a 99p store (where they had things like Colgate toothpaste and Nivea face wash!) and also finally bought something at Argos (an alarm clock, sigh). American mind still broken.
Back at the hall, I had dinner with a Sketchy McSketcherton who told me he could tell I was a hipster by the way I walked (!?) and who wanted to get a drink later; I demurred and went out to meet the political theorist and some friends at a pub near the hall. Woud up, against expectations really, having a great time, meeting a bunch of Canadians, and proving I can still hold my own in a conversation about Hannah Arendt. I also spent a lot of time talking with a terrifically nice fixed-gear enthusiast from Montreal, who has offered to get me set up with a cheap ride via the London equivalent of the Bike Church, and invited me to Brick Lane on Sunday (e.g., tomorrow) to watch Bike Polo, which is apparently just what it sounds like. Given this option, or the alternative, which is staying in and re-reading Augustine's Confessiones, I think the choice is clear.
Day 6
I am going to have to keep updating this regularly if I hope to include half the interesting bits. It seems positively remarkable that I haven't even been here a week yet-- eventually the work will have to start, of course (eventually, like, um, Monday?) but for now I just go out, try and get my bearings, look at what I find interesting and talk to whom I find interesting.
My plan was to spend today in the British Museum, which is deliriously close to where I'm staying, maybe a five minute walk. And around 10 AM, what a walk it was: sunny, a little hazy, the streets busy in a quiet way and Russell Square full of kids so cute it made my teeth hurt a little to look at them. Nevertheless, I went to the museum. I made it through about half of the Egyption and most of the Greek galleries before things became entirely choked with large grounds of Japanese and Brazilian tourists. I also appeared to be moving at the same pace, and through the same circuit, as every middle-aged American couple who had arrived at the opening at 9:30, Rick Steve's guide in hand, and who was following the route laid out in the book.
I made it as far as the Elgin marbles before I threw in the towel. They are, as advertised, truly spectacular. I mean, truly stunning in a way I won't even try and do justice to here. (Though, suffice it to say, the story of their arrival in the British Museum is enough to make me reconsider my earlier comments about the majesty and laudability of the collector's business. It's a complicated and ideologically-fraught business, on a good day and there would be no, say, Cotton collection at the BL if bishops hadn't been burnt in Smithfield.) My favorite objects in the small portion of the galleries that I saw today were, as always, the idiosyncratic pieces were standard generic forms and now-inscrutable personal taste seem to combine: a tiny bronze figure of two women fighting (one has a sword!), a vase depicting the birth of Athena were Zeus' stylized eyes wince with pain, a carving from an Assyrian temple where cuneiform has been incised over a bas-relief of a hero fighting some kind of fish-monster, making the text appear to ripple with the figures' contortions. And some sexy, sexy Roman-era recreations of Greek statue. I'll be back, obvs-- I never made it to the Sutton Hoo treasure or Lindow man, the two things I'd got specifically to see-- but there's a long grey winter ahead for that.
Given that the sun was still out, I decided to walk east, a direction I had not heretofore explored. I walked down Clerkenwell (hey, it's medieval!), past something called the Yo! Sushi Academy (who would like to fund my visit to the local Yo!Sushi branch? Pretty please? They conveyor belts! if Rube Goldberg were alive today I bet this would be his favorite place to eat.) on to St. John's gate (the rebels burnt the original church there in 1831), where I visited the very small museum of the Order of St. John Ambulance, e.g. the Knights Hospitaller (Wat Tyler and friends also saw fit to dispatch their bishop at the time and to burn up all the records of the Knights Templar, which order the Hospitallers had absorbed after it was dissolved. In this way they provided the grist for hours and hours of History Channel programing and not a few masters theses). Eventually, I wound up in Hoxton Square, a nice, Northern-Liberties like neighborhood, chatting with an excitable Irishman named Jason, who announced that, well, I "[didn't] look like an American" (still unsure if that was compliment, insult, or observation. I seem to blend in well enough; people ask me for directions) and talked to me about American politics and told me I would make a beautiful mother someday. Remarkably, he'd actually spent time in West Philadelphia, and it was a relief to be able to explain to someone where I'd come from without having to resort to Will Smith lyrics. Inevitably, as all straight men seem to want to do, regardless of race, creed, or country of origin, he told me about his ex-girlfriend and how he is still in love with her, even more so now that she's taken up with another man. What do you want me to say, guys? No, seriously, what do you want me to say?
[There is room here for a larger disquisition on the rather dramatic differences in cross-gender socializing I've already observed here as opposed to the states, and how a display of the tinest bit of knowledge about, say, house DJ's or Britpop, surprises and delights, but it's late now and I am quite certain there will be other occassions for such a discourse.]
I walked back through Islington, which was, like Camden, packed full of real people going about their business and had a prosperous but comfortably worn feel to it. Came back to the dorm by cutting through a tiny, bucolic graveyard that I happened on completely by accident, unfortunately disturbing its two living occupants, who were making out with one another. Dinner featured a suspicious fish, but no ill effects yet, and a repeat performance by Sketchy McSketcherton, who was drunk and wearing a t-shrit that said "Hello, my name is Michelle." Did I mention he's got to be closer to 35 than 25?
Later, all I wanted was ice cream, frozen yogurt, gelato, anything soft and creamy. Since it was after eight-o-friggin-clock in the evening, though, everything, including Sainsbury's was closed. Salvation came, eventually, in the form of a Cadbury's chocolate pudding cup from Tesco, that minature emporium of-- well, not culinary, exactly, but gustatory-- delights. It was pretty good. Not Walker's Thai Chili Crisps good, of course, but let's not be greedy. Odd that the US should have a firm commerical upper hand when it comes to fast food, but not at all in the candy market. Clearly, this merits further study in the form of things like Aero bars.
... and now I'm telling the story. Whew. Brick Lane, Bike Polo and there really ought to be some reading done tomorrow. There is no longer any doubt in my mind how it is possible to live within sprinting distance of the British Library and not get any work at all done on one's dissertation.
PS, those of you with Skype should look me up; the username is the same as the gmail address in my facebook profile. How's that for Web 2.0?
My plan was to spend today in the British Museum, which is deliriously close to where I'm staying, maybe a five minute walk. And around 10 AM, what a walk it was: sunny, a little hazy, the streets busy in a quiet way and Russell Square full of kids so cute it made my teeth hurt a little to look at them. Nevertheless, I went to the museum. I made it through about half of the Egyption and most of the Greek galleries before things became entirely choked with large grounds of Japanese and Brazilian tourists. I also appeared to be moving at the same pace, and through the same circuit, as every middle-aged American couple who had arrived at the opening at 9:30, Rick Steve's guide in hand, and who was following the route laid out in the book.
I made it as far as the Elgin marbles before I threw in the towel. They are, as advertised, truly spectacular. I mean, truly stunning in a way I won't even try and do justice to here. (Though, suffice it to say, the story of their arrival in the British Museum is enough to make me reconsider my earlier comments about the majesty and laudability of the collector's business. It's a complicated and ideologically-fraught business, on a good day and there would be no, say, Cotton collection at the BL if bishops hadn't been burnt in Smithfield.) My favorite objects in the small portion of the galleries that I saw today were, as always, the idiosyncratic pieces were standard generic forms and now-inscrutable personal taste seem to combine: a tiny bronze figure of two women fighting (one has a sword!), a vase depicting the birth of Athena were Zeus' stylized eyes wince with pain, a carving from an Assyrian temple where cuneiform has been incised over a bas-relief of a hero fighting some kind of fish-monster, making the text appear to ripple with the figures' contortions. And some sexy, sexy Roman-era recreations of Greek statue. I'll be back, obvs-- I never made it to the Sutton Hoo treasure or Lindow man, the two things I'd got specifically to see-- but there's a long grey winter ahead for that.
Given that the sun was still out, I decided to walk east, a direction I had not heretofore explored. I walked down Clerkenwell (hey, it's medieval!), past something called the Yo! Sushi Academy (who would like to fund my visit to the local Yo!Sushi branch? Pretty please? They conveyor belts! if Rube Goldberg were alive today I bet this would be his favorite place to eat.) on to St. John's gate (the rebels burnt the original church there in 1831), where I visited the very small museum of the Order of St. John Ambulance, e.g. the Knights Hospitaller (Wat Tyler and friends also saw fit to dispatch their bishop at the time and to burn up all the records of the Knights Templar, which order the Hospitallers had absorbed after it was dissolved. In this way they provided the grist for hours and hours of History Channel programing and not a few masters theses). Eventually, I wound up in Hoxton Square, a nice, Northern-Liberties like neighborhood, chatting with an excitable Irishman named Jason, who announced that, well, I "[didn't] look like an American" (still unsure if that was compliment, insult, or observation. I seem to blend in well enough; people ask me for directions) and talked to me about American politics and told me I would make a beautiful mother someday. Remarkably, he'd actually spent time in West Philadelphia, and it was a relief to be able to explain to someone where I'd come from without having to resort to Will Smith lyrics. Inevitably, as all straight men seem to want to do, regardless of race, creed, or country of origin, he told me about his ex-girlfriend and how he is still in love with her, even more so now that she's taken up with another man. What do you want me to say, guys? No, seriously, what do you want me to say?
[There is room here for a larger disquisition on the rather dramatic differences in cross-gender socializing I've already observed here as opposed to the states, and how a display of the tinest bit of knowledge about, say, house DJ's or Britpop, surprises and delights, but it's late now and I am quite certain there will be other occassions for such a discourse.]
I walked back through Islington, which was, like Camden, packed full of real people going about their business and had a prosperous but comfortably worn feel to it. Came back to the dorm by cutting through a tiny, bucolic graveyard that I happened on completely by accident, unfortunately disturbing its two living occupants, who were making out with one another. Dinner featured a suspicious fish, but no ill effects yet, and a repeat performance by Sketchy McSketcherton, who was drunk and wearing a t-shrit that said "Hello, my name is Michelle." Did I mention he's got to be closer to 35 than 25?
Later, all I wanted was ice cream, frozen yogurt, gelato, anything soft and creamy. Since it was after eight-o-friggin-clock in the evening, though, everything, including Sainsbury's was closed. Salvation came, eventually, in the form of a Cadbury's chocolate pudding cup from Tesco, that minature emporium of-- well, not culinary, exactly, but gustatory-- delights. It was pretty good. Not Walker's Thai Chili Crisps good, of course, but let's not be greedy. Odd that the US should have a firm commerical upper hand when it comes to fast food, but not at all in the candy market. Clearly, this merits further study in the form of things like Aero bars.
... and now I'm telling the story. Whew. Brick Lane, Bike Polo and there really ought to be some reading done tomorrow. There is no longer any doubt in my mind how it is possible to live within sprinting distance of the British Library and not get any work at all done on one's dissertation.
PS, those of you with Skype should look me up; the username is the same as the gmail address in my facebook profile. How's that for Web 2.0?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Day 4
I have acquired one new piece of photo identification every day I've been here so far, and need to get at least one more. I left with three pieces of photo ID (passport, driver's license, student ID card) and I now have four more, a 133% increase: a card to get into my hall, an additional student ID card, a library card and a reader's pass for the British Library. The student oystercard (for discounted bus and underground rides) should be coming in the post next week.
After I got my card I walked around in the exhibition hall that houses the "treasures of the British Library." (Sadly, an exhibt on the Ramanyana has just recently closed, and the special exhibits gallery is currently in transition.) It was an interesting and in many ways disquieting experience to encounter, say, the Beowulf manuscript in (quite literally) the flesh and have it seem, as a static object open to a particular page, both less real and yet more reified than the various facsimilies and printed editions of that book that I've handled. Conversely, it was strange to encounter facsimilies of the Linsfrane Gospels in both electronic and codex form, while the manuscript itself was conspicuously absent, temporarily removed from view for conservation. The presence of two facisimilies surprised me, since isn't the whole point of such a treasury to house the irreplaceable, the rare, the unique? It's as though the import of the Gospels, and by extension, much of the exhibit as a whole (certainly the illuminated manuscript portion, which occupies maybe half the space), lies not in its textuality or even its materiality, but rather in aesthetics that are both tied to and very much mobile vis-a-vis the physical object. This last point is amply demonstrated by a visit to the gift shop one enters immediately upon leaving the exhibit. One of the things I've been struggling with as I start my disseration is the sixteenth century antiquarian's desire to monumentalize after the dissolution of the monasteries, to say that we have (or had) this, to articulate the past in order that it can be superceded. I'm not sure whether pulling out Frued or Kapital would give me the best theoretical framework with which to work through these issues, but from a practical perspective, I think that working in the BL will give me plenty of material (in every sense of the term) with which to work through that particular crux.
On another note, in some ways I find the existence of things like the British Museum and the British Library more remarkable than that of the objects they hold. However inappropriately, I cling to some notion of a kind of genius or inspiration that lies behind great works of art and literature, whereas the creation and maintainance of collections seems to require planning and foresight that is all the more moving to me because its an impulse that is familiar. "Genius" (however you want to define it) is so different from my own experience of being-in-the-world so as to create a sort of distance between me as viewer/reader and the work, while the innate familiarity of the actions of getting and organizing that go into any good collection make things like libraries and museums that much more impressive to me.
After I got my card I walked around in the exhibition hall that houses the "treasures of the British Library." (Sadly, an exhibt on the Ramanyana has just recently closed, and the special exhibits gallery is currently in transition.) It was an interesting and in many ways disquieting experience to encounter, say, the Beowulf manuscript in (quite literally) the flesh and have it seem, as a static object open to a particular page, both less real and yet more reified than the various facsimilies and printed editions of that book that I've handled. Conversely, it was strange to encounter facsimilies of the Linsfrane Gospels in both electronic and codex form, while the manuscript itself was conspicuously absent, temporarily removed from view for conservation. The presence of two facisimilies surprised me, since isn't the whole point of such a treasury to house the irreplaceable, the rare, the unique? It's as though the import of the Gospels, and by extension, much of the exhibit as a whole (certainly the illuminated manuscript portion, which occupies maybe half the space), lies not in its textuality or even its materiality, but rather in aesthetics that are both tied to and very much mobile vis-a-vis the physical object. This last point is amply demonstrated by a visit to the gift shop one enters immediately upon leaving the exhibit. One of the things I've been struggling with as I start my disseration is the sixteenth century antiquarian's desire to monumentalize after the dissolution of the monasteries, to say that we have (or had) this, to articulate the past in order that it can be superceded. I'm not sure whether pulling out Frued or Kapital would give me the best theoretical framework with which to work through these issues, but from a practical perspective, I think that working in the BL will give me plenty of material (in every sense of the term) with which to work through that particular crux.
On another note, in some ways I find the existence of things like the British Museum and the British Library more remarkable than that of the objects they hold. However inappropriately, I cling to some notion of a kind of genius or inspiration that lies behind great works of art and literature, whereas the creation and maintainance of collections seems to require planning and foresight that is all the more moving to me because its an impulse that is familiar. "Genius" (however you want to define it) is so different from my own experience of being-in-the-world so as to create a sort of distance between me as viewer/reader and the work, while the innate familiarity of the actions of getting and organizing that go into any good collection make things like libraries and museums that much more impressive to me.
Day 2
Arrived early on campus for my "enrolement" and, aside from a terrible sandwich and some minor confusion over British vs. American forms of writing dates (a hint: if the second pair of numbers is "17," that does not indicate the month of my birth), got it all sorted out with a minimum of hassle. I'd spontaneously emailed two professors teaching relevant grad courses asking if I could audit, and received one enthusiastic reply, so I rather unexpectedly wound up sitting in on a discussion of The Body in Pain and one of Aelfric's sermons. It seems worth sticking with the course: although the reading list is heavy, it should help lend some structure to my week and fill in some gaps in my knowledge of Anglo-Saxon this-and-that. The professor also offered to let me sit in on her undergraduate course in Old English, which I declined. Though it's something I really ought to learn, I don't expect to be teaching it and don't need it for my dissertation (unlike, say, French, Latin, or German) and so it will have to wait.
In the evening, I went to Chelsea (cue Elvis Costello) to see Now or Later. Written by Christopher Shinn, an American whose professional webpage naturally enough includes a link to his myspace site, it's set on election night in the hotel room of the Democratic nominee's son. The set-up, in brief, is that potentially controversial photos of the son have been leaked to the internet; the campaign wants him to issue a statement, preemptively apologizing for the pictures, while he refuses to do so, whether on prinicipal or out of a more basic familial resentment. It's either a family drama mapped onto a political piece, or vice-versa, hard to say. It was quite short, about eighty minutes, which wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that nothing really got resolved; there was sort of a medicus ex machina in the form of a phone call from the main character's analyst, and that was that. Not the action was really the point, I know, but it was strangely pat ending for a piece that spent the first seventy minutes dealing almost exclusively in complexity and moral ambiguity. What I thought was exceptionally strong was the dialogue, which consisted largely of debate between the main character and a college friend; it got a certain kind of very young, well-educated, somewhat self-indulgent archness down pat. And captured the theoretically-inflected rhetoric of a certain kind of ivy league undergraduate-- the main character's boyfriend had broken up with him because "monogamy is a heteronormative construct designed to minimize discursive space for queen transgressiveness." Oh, the pathos! The dialogue was so compelling, in fact, that it almost made me forget about the mostly British cast's wildly divergent takes on an American accent.
This trip marked my first experience with the London Underground. The Russell Square stop is on the Piccadilly Line which, as some of you may know, is very very deep underground. British sineage really throws me, and as a result I made not one but two trips up and down from the platform before finally locating a west-bound train, the first trip down having been made, in heels, on the stairs. Of which there are 175, something I did not know until I noticed the sign at the bottom of the stairs indicating as such, and also that they are only to be used in cases of emergency. Ah well.
In the evening, I went to Chelsea (cue Elvis Costello) to see Now or Later. Written by Christopher Shinn, an American whose professional webpage naturally enough includes a link to his myspace site, it's set on election night in the hotel room of the Democratic nominee's son. The set-up, in brief, is that potentially controversial photos of the son have been leaked to the internet; the campaign wants him to issue a statement, preemptively apologizing for the pictures, while he refuses to do so, whether on prinicipal or out of a more basic familial resentment. It's either a family drama mapped onto a political piece, or vice-versa, hard to say. It was quite short, about eighty minutes, which wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that nothing really got resolved; there was sort of a medicus ex machina in the form of a phone call from the main character's analyst, and that was that. Not the action was really the point, I know, but it was strangely pat ending for a piece that spent the first seventy minutes dealing almost exclusively in complexity and moral ambiguity. What I thought was exceptionally strong was the dialogue, which consisted largely of debate between the main character and a college friend; it got a certain kind of very young, well-educated, somewhat self-indulgent archness down pat. And captured the theoretically-inflected rhetoric of a certain kind of ivy league undergraduate-- the main character's boyfriend had broken up with him because "monogamy is a heteronormative construct designed to minimize discursive space for queen transgressiveness." Oh, the pathos! The dialogue was so compelling, in fact, that it almost made me forget about the mostly British cast's wildly divergent takes on an American accent.
This trip marked my first experience with the London Underground. The Russell Square stop is on the Piccadilly Line which, as some of you may know, is very very deep underground. British sineage really throws me, and as a result I made not one but two trips up and down from the platform before finally locating a west-bound train, the first trip down having been made, in heels, on the stairs. Of which there are 175, something I did not know until I noticed the sign at the bottom of the stairs indicating as such, and also that they are only to be used in cases of emergency. Ah well.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Day 3
So, we'll start off with very little of the titular scissors or cake, but, as promised, none of the scholarly life. I've been in London for three days now and most of my time has been spent sleeping at odd times (jet lag!), walking around, and standing in line while trying to acquire certain needful things. In fact, so much of my time has been spent standing in various lines and/or in various waiting and reception areas, that the first two activities merely feel like temporary respites from the third.
Today was spent comparatively locally, around Russell Square and the various University of London related buildings there. In keeping with my lietmotif of standing in line, I got a library card for Senate House (seen here in all its Owellian glory), the proccessing of which was delayed by the arrival young man from Royal Holloway who'd forgotten his student ID and so was denied a card, and who pitched a fit that included raising his voice, emptying his wallet of all its contents and attempting to jump the entry barrier in order to access a computer and verify his identity using Teh Internets (the librarian said while she was sure there were very nice pictures of him on said internet, he needed the card. And also that she was, in fact, the supervisor on duty. Hee!). Senate House is nice but I don't understand why they don't have the OUP edition of Augustine's Confessiones, or what organizational scheme places the church fathers immediately next to the sports psychology section.
Later, I visited my first "real" UK grocery store (the Tesco express opposite the Tube station does not count, although it does have Walker's Sweet Thai Chili potato chips, with which I am obsessed. More of that below). As the song says, "I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere, so I started there." This was a Waitrose, which I gather to be a rather upscale chain, more along the lines of a Whole Foods in the US, and it had wide, gleaming suburban aisles full of packages of things which looked familiar but on closer inspection proved to be manifestly unfamiliar (much like the process of converting pounds into dollars). It pains me still that I don't have access to a kitchen here, but I did buy some cookies, some tea, some whole wheat bread and some peanut butter, which people for some reason insisted I wouldn't be able to find in the UK. They had both the crunchy and creamy kind, even (I got crunchy). My hall is a "catered" hall, which means that a full meal plan is automatically included with the room, at attendant cost. The food in the dining room is rather, um, uninspired, with the weird exception of the desserts, which so far have exceeded expectations. I'm trying to adjust to eating a larger breakfast, so's to economize on lunch, but it's weird and I find the sight and smell of stewed tomatoes at 8 in the morning distinctly unappetizing. Hence the wheat bread and peanut butter, which should make tasty, filling sandwiches and sit comfortably on my shelf until then.
(As you can see, I am not the only one who feels strongly about the sweet thai chili chips, er, crisps. They taste very similar to bbq-flavored chips but better, somehow. The bag assures me that this is because they use real chilies, but given the fact that Walker's is merely the UK subsidiary of Frito-Lay it's likely MSG or a known carinogen or something. The Walker's Sensations range-- carried in full at the aforementioned Tesco express-- also includes "Carmelized onion and balsamic vinegar," "sea salt and cracked black pepper," "Vintage cheddar and red onion chutney," "lime and thai spices," and, perhaps most intruigingly, "oven roast chicken with lemon and thyme." Obviously, I look forward to trying them all.)
But the grocery store was perhaps the least interesting stop on my shopping intenary today. Most interesting would be a tie between Muji and Argos. Muji is a Japanese store which sells, according to their website, "no brand quality goods". It's little like if IKEA and H&M got together (there's clothing and furniture sections upstairs) and gave birth to children, and these children were a stationary section and a travel goods section. And it was all very restrained and tasteful, and it all costs amounts that a sane person would be willing to pay, as opposed to most things in London. I could have happily spend a great deal of time and a not insignificant sum of money there, but I walked away with only a scented candle meant to address the fact that my room smells exactly like you'd expect a 112 square foot space in a fifty year old building.
Argos is something else entirely. Basically, it's a department store, but rather than the items being on a shelf, you select them from a catalogue, and the number into a kiosk, along with your payment info. The staff goes into the back (a warehouse, presumably), and brings your items out to you. You pay and you leave. And I don't know why but this breaks my American brain so hard: it's probably been going on forever and anyone who's reading this who's lived in Britian is probably going "Yeah. What about it?" But really, if you want to know something about a culture, I think there are worse places to look than when they get their food and their discount home goods.
The one thing I have not been able to find at a reasonable price is a new battery charger for the camera. I don't know whether it's broken or simply not wired to talk nice with any of my various voltage converters, but I'm unable to get it to work and was unwilling to purchase any of the universal chargers the nice electronics salesmen offered me for 39.99 (though I did manage to talk one guy down to 29.99). There will be pictures once I get that straightened out.
Till then-
Today was spent comparatively locally, around Russell Square and the various University of London related buildings there. In keeping with my lietmotif of standing in line, I got a library card for Senate House (seen here in all its Owellian glory), the proccessing of which was delayed by the arrival young man from Royal Holloway who'd forgotten his student ID and so was denied a card, and who pitched a fit that included raising his voice, emptying his wallet of all its contents and attempting to jump the entry barrier in order to access a computer and verify his identity using Teh Internets (the librarian said while she was sure there were very nice pictures of him on said internet, he needed the card. And also that she was, in fact, the supervisor on duty. Hee!). Senate House is nice but I don't understand why they don't have the OUP edition of Augustine's Confessiones, or what organizational scheme places the church fathers immediately next to the sports psychology section.
Later, I visited my first "real" UK grocery store (the Tesco express opposite the Tube station does not count, although it does have Walker's Sweet Thai Chili potato chips, with which I am obsessed. More of that below). As the song says, "I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere, so I started there." This was a Waitrose, which I gather to be a rather upscale chain, more along the lines of a Whole Foods in the US, and it had wide, gleaming suburban aisles full of packages of things which looked familiar but on closer inspection proved to be manifestly unfamiliar (much like the process of converting pounds into dollars). It pains me still that I don't have access to a kitchen here, but I did buy some cookies, some tea, some whole wheat bread and some peanut butter, which people for some reason insisted I wouldn't be able to find in the UK. They had both the crunchy and creamy kind, even (I got crunchy). My hall is a "catered" hall, which means that a full meal plan is automatically included with the room, at attendant cost. The food in the dining room is rather, um, uninspired, with the weird exception of the desserts, which so far have exceeded expectations. I'm trying to adjust to eating a larger breakfast, so's to economize on lunch, but it's weird and I find the sight and smell of stewed tomatoes at 8 in the morning distinctly unappetizing. Hence the wheat bread and peanut butter, which should make tasty, filling sandwiches and sit comfortably on my shelf until then.
(As you can see, I am not the only one who feels strongly about the sweet thai chili chips, er, crisps. They taste very similar to bbq-flavored chips but better, somehow. The bag assures me that this is because they use real chilies, but given the fact that Walker's is merely the UK subsidiary of Frito-Lay it's likely MSG or a known carinogen or something. The Walker's Sensations range-- carried in full at the aforementioned Tesco express-- also includes "Carmelized onion and balsamic vinegar," "sea salt and cracked black pepper," "Vintage cheddar and red onion chutney," "lime and thai spices," and, perhaps most intruigingly, "oven roast chicken with lemon and thyme." Obviously, I look forward to trying them all.)
But the grocery store was perhaps the least interesting stop on my shopping intenary today. Most interesting would be a tie between Muji and Argos. Muji is a Japanese store which sells, according to their website, "no brand quality goods". It's little like if IKEA and H&M got together (there's clothing and furniture sections upstairs) and gave birth to children, and these children were a stationary section and a travel goods section. And it was all very restrained and tasteful, and it all costs amounts that a sane person would be willing to pay, as opposed to most things in London. I could have happily spend a great deal of time and a not insignificant sum of money there, but I walked away with only a scented candle meant to address the fact that my room smells exactly like you'd expect a 112 square foot space in a fifty year old building.
Argos is something else entirely. Basically, it's a department store, but rather than the items being on a shelf, you select them from a catalogue, and the number into a kiosk, along with your payment info. The staff goes into the back (a warehouse, presumably), and brings your items out to you. You pay and you leave. And I don't know why but this breaks my American brain so hard: it's probably been going on forever and anyone who's reading this who's lived in Britian is probably going "Yeah. What about it?" But really, if you want to know something about a culture, I think there are worse places to look than when they get their food and their discount home goods.
The one thing I have not been able to find at a reasonable price is a new battery charger for the camera. I don't know whether it's broken or simply not wired to talk nice with any of my various voltage converters, but I'm unable to get it to work and was unwilling to purchase any of the universal chargers the nice electronics salesmen offered me for 39.99 (though I did manage to talk one guy down to 29.99). There will be pictures once I get that straightened out.
Till then-
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