So, this girl in my flat has had a rather small box of tea bags in her cupboard since September. She mentioned it today when I was brewing some cheap Assam, saying that she thought that she drank tea all the time. Apparently not. I think the British don't so much adore tea as drink it to prove their very British-ness. Interesting holdover from colonialism, really.
(I'm not really serious about this assessment. It just struck me.)
Today's weather was unpredictable. The sunny afternoon was interspersed with furious hailstorms and pelting rain. After one such outburst died down, I started walking into town with the vague hope of getting to a bookstore before the next one began. I made it, but as I walked into the bookstore I could see another front of dark clouds moving inexorably across the city.
I was at the bookstore to purchase Odd and the Frost Giants. Neil Gaiman wrote this book for World Book Day, an event designed to magically transform stuffy little television-watching U.K. children into voracious-and-enlightened readers. It only cost me a pound, which made me feel something of a thief. After all, I'm already voracious and somewhat enlightened, and I'm no longer a child in any sense but the deepest.
Clutching the book beneath my jacket, I made my way towards The Tea House. I failed to reach it before the leading edge of the storm dumped hail in waves on the streets around me. It was exhilarating and harmless — I was wearing my rain jacket, which holds down a second job as a hail barrier.
Although I failed to dodge the hail, I did manage to avoid the heavy rain that followed it. While the rain darkened the polished Elm Street cobblestones and washed the colors from the buildings, I was inside enjoying a pot of free-trade Assam tea and breaking into Odd and the Frost Giants.
It's a simple book but a good one, filled with matter-of-fact magic and fabulous adventure. Odd is a cheerful and unlucky boy possessing no small amount of charm. He travels with his companions (a fox, an eagle and a bear) to Asgard, hall of the Norse Gods, in order to win the city back from the Frost Giants. Luckily, he's a special boy.
I finished the book and my tea and happily made my way homeward. Gaiman stories and quick-change weather make for incredible sky vistas. They took my breath away.
So I've been looking at old chat logs. Found this conversation between me and… myself. It's a bit odd.
Session Start (AIM – insanityisall:enthupaul): Sun Jan 04 23:24:00 2004
enthupaul: Hey.
*** Auto-response sent to enthupaul: Calculus excercises the brain and I'm working up a mental sweat.
insanityisall: Hello.
insanityisall: I see you've gotten a different text color.
enthupaul: Well, yes.
insanityisall: It's still blue, but not nearly as nice a color.
enthupaul: Ah.
enthupaul: I was somewhat disturbed by having everything in common with you.
enthupaul: It's as if it were meant to be.
enthupaul: But that's impossible.
enthupaul: Coincidences just bring back bad memories that I'd rather foget.
enthupaul: Sorry, forget.
insanityisall: I can understand that.
insanityisall: If I'd gone through a similar situation, I might have turned out very similar.
insanityisall: But I must be going to bed now.
insanityisall: Because I'm bloody tired.
enthupaul: Okay.
enthupaul: Well, talk to you later.
enthupaul: I only came online to see if you were there…
enthupaul: I'm afraid I wasn't very interesting when I talked to you last.
insanityisall: That is partially my fault.
enthupaul: I don't blame you.
insanityisall: Well, nor do I blame you.
insanityisall: So, we're even.
enthupaul: Hehe.
enthupaul: Goodnight.
insanityisall: See you.
Session Close (enthupaul): Sun Jan 04 23:27:34 2004
New best article title: "For Frog-Licking Scientist, the Tongue Says It All".
"[But] I don't recommend this," the biologist cautioned, "because if you lick the wrong frog it can be very bad."
…
By 1990 Valerie was entering her hand-raised frogs into local jumping races. When a photo of her blowing on her favorite frog—to encourage jumping—landed in the Baltimore Sun, it was both exciting and worrisome: She had skipped school for the contest. Luckily, the school principal "thought it was downright hilarious," she said.
…
Today Valerie, six feet tall (about two meters tall) with long copper hair, "is still kissing frogs in search of the one that will turn into her prince," [Valerie's mother] said.
Courtesy of National Geographic Magazine.
To celebrate the Leap Day today, I finished a book and read three more. But for you, I will share something I read on Steven Brust's online journal:
Leap Day has a tradition going far, far back in time. In ancient Sumeria, it was considered a day for taking chances–for doing things normally considered too risky, such as entering a hitherto unexplored cave, descending a steep cliff, or making wisecracks to airport security. The Aztecs celebrated leap day with drunken revelry and corset piercings. To the Hunnish tribes, it was a day for telling long jokes that always ended, “That’s what the horse said.†The ancient Celts saw it a time when the barriers to faerie were thin, so they would engage in religious rites at stone circles in which they would ask the gods to please give them a better calender. The magyars saw it as a day for eating fine food and having wild, abandoned sex–in other words, they didn’t take particular note of it.
Today, our celebrations are more sedate, and we usually use it as an opportunity to make fun of a certain class of neo-pagan and for making things up out of whole cloth.
A note for Cami, Paul, and possibly Aaron: You should apply your grains of salt right about now.
I'd appreciate comments on this poem I wrote for my class today.
Nectarines
I said I preferred peaches, but you wanted a nectarine. So we brought it back and you portioned it out and I found it wasn't better — only different. You went back to your city, and I held the taste in my mouth for days. Curl the knife around the pit; gently twist the halves apart. Admire the honey-golden forms and the rich-veined flesh. So what did I buy at the grocer's on St. Benedict's Street? Not peaches, but smooth nectarines. It is different in this country, where pleasures have become necessities. These days I cannot taste except in memory.
Norwich just had an earthquake. As soon as I felt it, I poked my head out the door and found Tom and Remy doing the same. There was a chorus of "sweet!" and related terms, and we went back inside. I estimate between three and four on the Richter scale (3.6, to be precise). My night is over, really. There's not much that can top an earthquake.
That makes three or four I've felt that I can bring to mind at the moment. The biggest, of course, was the one in Portland when I was in late elementary school. The most ironic was in 9th grade when someone walked into the classroom and shouted "earthquake!" and then it happened halfway through that class.
This makes me happy.
I just went to London again. And I'm re-reading Neverwhere with a few friends. It's so cool that I now have first-hand experience of where some of those locations are. My hotel was very close to Oxford street, and became one of the big landmarks for getting back there from other parts of the city. So when Gaiman writes,
It was late afternoon in Central London, and, with autumn drawing on, it was getting dark. Richard had taken the Tube to Tottenham Court Road, and was now walking west down Oxford Street, holding the piece of paper. Oxford Street was the retail hub of London, and even now the pavements were packed with shoppers and tourists.
I know where it is. That's the major street corner closest to my hotel. Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street. Actually, at that corner Tottenham Court Road (North) changes to Charing Cross Road (South) and Oxford Street (West) changes to New Oxford Street (East). When I go back into London with Sarah, I'm going to take Neverwhere and explore some of its locations. See if I can't find the alleyway where Richard Mayhew meets the Marquis de Carabas.
I pulled a poetry all-nighter last night, getting my poetry portfolio done for class, and submitting some random stuff to Reflection. I'm really tired now, for some reason. Tomorrow I bus to London for the weekend. Hopefully I will come back with pictures. Hopefully I will make it back. If I do, I'll keep you posted.
Because I've been too lazy to post hardly anything about my travels so far, I'm going to give you three photosets. Some of you may have seen them on Flickr already, but many of you probably haven't. There are a lot of pictures up there.
This is the town in which we had our family stay. It has a nice cathedral, and not too much else. Although that's an overly quick judgment.
This actually encompasses two trips into Norwich. I hope you'll forgive me.
A trip to the grocery store yields some nice pictures.
Nathan came to visit me, and we walked all over Norwich, eating delicious meals on the way. Thirty miles in one weekend. It was great to see him.
