Tuesday, March 25, 2008

On to Amsterdam

Today is our last full day in London. Tomorrow morning early we fly to Amsterdam. Chandra and Melanie will go their way to explore the Netherlands, and I will go mine. I will travel to Rotterdam where I will meet artist Marcel Ruijters. Marcel and I have been friends by email for several years. This will be our first opportunity to meet. You may recall Marcel contributed a piece ("The Bush-Hitler Connection") to the book I co-edited, The Bush Junta. After visiting Marcel, I will travel to Utrecht to visit another email friend and Bush Junta contributor, Albo Helmo. Then I will travel to Amsterdam. For the next couple of days, I will explore Amsterdam on my own, then rendezvous with Chandra and Melanie to return to the US.

For the next couple of days, I will be busy visiting with Marcel and Albo, therefore will probably not be posting here. In Amsterdam, I will post again, depending on whether or not I can find an Internet connection. If not, the next time you hear from me will be after I get back home.

Riding the Eye











Sunday, March 23, 2008

Mind the Gap


Random memories of the past four days … the train ride from Gatwick Airport to London … dark brick row houses with chimneys against gray sky … church spires … daffodils and graffiti by the railroad tracks … woman in a burka, her baby in a carriage … Victoria Station, the bustling city crowds … Dickensian faces … the man with guitar singing about meningitis … getting off the tube … “mind the gap, mind the gap” … struggling with my luggage through the streets I hear someone shout “Hey, Wild Bill!” and looking up see a workman on a rooftop smiling …


Trafalgar Square … the National Gallery … coming face to face with a giant da Vinci cartoon … at first I don’t recognize it then realize it is one I have long admired in a book I own, but it’s a different picture seen full size with my own eyes … a group of uniformed school children seated on the before a painting of Perseus and Medusa, listening to a lecture … British accents and so many languages … French, Spanish, Italian … strange to be in a place where there are so few Americans … strange and not a bad feeling at all …

At Madame Tussauds on Good Friday … the place is mobbed … almost entirely French tourists, people getting their pictures taken with the wax figures … movie stars, sports stars, royalty … political figures … no one goes near the Bush or Nixon figures … but people crowd around JFK and MLK … the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street gets my vote for Best. Tourist. Trap. Ever … wonderful realistic relics from Holmes’ career under glass … going up the narrow creaky Edwardian staircase to the top floor to a small room where mannequins are posed in lurid murder scenes … wonderful …

Harrods … impossible crowds, Egyptian décor … my feet are hurting … uniformed guards … riding down the escalator I see a crowd below taking pictures of something … everyone chattering in a dozen languages, Chinese, Spanish … “que esta?” … “es Diana y Dodi” … a memorial to Diana and Dodi … I pull out my camera and take a photo, which comes out blurry due to the jostling crowd … next day at Kensington Palace, Diana merchandise … and the Diana Memorial Fountain shaped like a fountain ... we wander Kensington Garden … wind roaring in the bare trees, sunlight and shadow alternating on the manicured green grass … children playing … the occasional jogger … lovers strolling arm in arm … the sunlit clouds sail south …


In the tube, a couple are lost and confused by the map … he is upset, fit to be tied, speaking rapidly and loudly in Italian … a group of young British men walk up looking concerned, try to help … one holds out his map … the couple look at it bewildered … Chandra walks over and explains it to the woman who understands English … they thank her, smiling sweetly and hurry away … “mind the gap, mind the gap” …



London Tower … medieval walls … blasting cold wind … ornate graffiti on medieval prison walls … “the greater the suffering for Christ in this world, the greater reward with Christ in the next” something like that … the chopping block where Anne Bolyn was executed … an Italian woman gleefully makes chopping motions with her hands while her children laugh … ravens squawk … we walk across Tower Bridge in snow flurries, sky foreboding … at one point the Thames wind almost causes us to lose our caps and our footing … we laugh and forge ahead …

Then on the other side of the Thames, the sun comes out and we arrive at Boroughs Market and join the jostling crowd … wonderful cheese smells … fruits and vegetables … aromatic tables of fish that glow colorfully in British sun … at the German Deli stand, I order a freshly-cooked bratwurst sandwich with sauerkraut and wolf it down … then get in line at another stand to order a wild boar sandwich with onions and tangy sauce … Frenchmen walk by laughing say something about “wild boar” and make roaring sounds … I wolf down the sandwich, then buy baklava …






Later that night I take the tube to Hampstead where I was met by comic artist Carol Swain and her boyfriend Bruce … first time to meet Carol, though we emailed when I was editing The Bush Junta … she contributed the piece on the stolen election … we’ve both contributed to the same comic anthologies in the past, including both issues of Hotwire … now we meet … she and Bruce take me back to their flat, where we enjoy a lively conversation about the war and tyranny and dissent, and comics and things to see in London and so many things … Bruce is a New York expatriate who came to the UK over 20 years ago and decided to stay … they serve wonderful pizza and salad, and hand me binoculars and show me the view of London from their flat … the moon is full over St. Paul’s Cathedral … I give them copies of my Operation Northwoods comic and they give me copies of three recent comics they have collaborated on … they take me back to the tube station … “mind the gap, mind the gap” …



This morning, Easter morning, we looked outside and it was snowing … the snow didn’t stick, but it was pretty to see … they were big fluffy snowflakes that swarmed through the streets and swirled around the Dickensian rooftops … we were waiting for Melanie to arrive from the airport … she is Chandra’s high school friend, now living in Virginia … later they left for Isley to visit On the way to the Tate Britain, I come to the White Swan pub … order a fine creamy Guinness from the smiling German waitress … a smiling young Englishman brings me fish-and-chips … then, full of Guinness and fish-and-chips, I pull myself to a standing position and continue to the Tate to look at the pre-Raphaelite paintings … I am on my own today … we were joined this morning by Chandra’s high school friend Melanie … tonight they are in Isley visiting a couple they went to school with in Texas who are living here now … I sit in the flat eating lamb stew bought at Partridges on King’s Road tonight, sipping my Irish Stout, the sounds of London outside …