It is hard to believe that it was four days ago that the plane peeled
off the ground in Manchester and set down in Chicago. Those four days
have passed in a mad rush, which is odd considering that much of them
has been spent sleeping. They feel like an eternity and the blink of an
eye at once; in some ways, I still feel like I can just hop on the Tube
to get where I need to go, but the knowledge that the Tube is thousands
of miles away make the week or so since I was in London seem nearly
eternal. I fell in love with London while I was there, in the same way
that you fall in love with a piece of music, or with dancing. As much
as you say you want to hear that particular strain all the time, or
never leave the barre, even utterly exquisite moments can be assimilated
into tedious routine. That is why I think I will just leave London as
what it is now: a place I really, deeply love, and which I visit when I
get the chance. I love the city, but I don’t think I could live there,
not least because it is a city. That said, it made a valiant attempt
to pull me in, and I will always appreciate that and remember it
fondly.
The campaign began in earnest the day after we landed in Heathrow.
Setting out quite early in the morning, we walked, and then walked some
more, until finally, I saw it: Big Ben, standing quietly against the
cloudy, dove-gray sky. Had it been a person, I would have expected her
to be dressed in a silky dressing gown, sipping tea as she gazed
peacefully across the Thames. It suddenly struck me how very old the
city in which I was now standing actually was, a realization that did
not go away once we reached Westminster Abbey (established 960). I have
always loved old places. Growing up in the States, I haven’t had much
exposure to old places made by man, but there is a different kind of
grandeur to be found in a cavern system or an old stand of pines.
London has something in common with both of those places; it is a place
of layers, as a cave is formed of different striations in the rock or a
tree forms new rings as it grows. In that way, London feels organic as
few other cities I have been in do. I was walking along the same river
Shakespeare might have while trying to think of how to end Hamlet’s
final speech, possibly even taking the same route as him – and that was
just a matter of course. Kings might have taken that route too, and so
might have Archbishops. It was impossible to know anything for certain;
London is just so incredibly old, its layers so compressed together
into one town that the significance of one of them is impossible to
separate from that of another. That is one reason why I fell in love.
The next day, we went to, among other places, the British Library. I
spent a good bit of the time we were there wishing that the Reader card
application office wasn’t closed on Sundays, but, alas, it was. So I
wandered where I could. One thing that it is important to understand
about me is that libraries and I have always gotten along – largely
because books and I always have. There is something in nearly every
book I have read that I can admit an affinity for – in short, if I can’t
find something to relate to in a book, there is something seriously
wrong. Because of this, I knew that I would find the Treasures of
Britain exhibit in the library absolutely wonderful. However, I may
have underestimated my response to it. Turning left once past the doors
of the exhibit, the second book I came to was none other than the Beowulf
manuscript. For a moment, I just stood there, not quite believing what
lay in front of me. Then, because I am a ridiculously curious
literature major with a bit of a penchant for Anglo-Saxon, I tried to
read it. The only word I got was ‘helm’. There were headphones beside
the glass case, and so I put them on and listened to an actor whose
voice could educate a hurricane on the proper attributes of the word
‘stormy’ describe the monster Grendel and his attack on Hrothgar’s mead
hall, all the while looking wistfully at the flame-edged pages before
me. After a while – once I looked over my shoulder and saw a rather
impatient-looking older woman waiting behind me, that is – I realized I
had been monopolizing the manuscript and sheepishly moved on. I came to
the Old Hall manuscript, in which old songs had been laboriously and
immaculately laid down so they would not fade from memory. Three things
in me collided – the lover of books, the lover of music, and the lover
of old things – and I freely confess that, looking at that book that was
exponentially older than I am or any of those things in me are, one of
few records of old songs that yet remained, and only separated from me
by a pane of glass and a foot or so of space, I wept. I don’t remember
much else of the exhibit, except the Magna Carta – because, you know,
Magna Carta – but eventually, after wandering a bit more, I made my way
out of the exhibit and to the library café. I sat there, munching on a
Jammy Dodger and collecting myself a bit, and decided that next time I
was in London, I would have to come to the Library on a day that was not
a Sunday. Quite apart from the cool factor of having a Reader card to
the British Library, I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to need
it one day.
