Week 3 | Recap

I’m laying on the bed looking at a wall of books.  Hundreds of books. The personal stash of the Imperial College librarian’s flat we’re staying at this week.  Art and music, philosophy and novels, history and travel.  At home this was my nirvana.  I could be still,  escape for hours, wandering through the pages of the latest book [likely books] I was reading.

But here, stillness feels wrong.  I should be wandering in real life.  I am squandering opportunity.  I’m not doing enough.

Then.  I gather my photos to prepare for the weekly review.  And I feel like a dope.

We did a lot.

Since changing flats we’re now closer to Fulham Broadway, our stop on the District line. The trip to Tate Moden is long but requires no transfers.  Arriving at a new tube stations [they all have their own character – a blog post unto itself], Blackfriars, Grace and I start off on a 15 minute walk toward Millennium Bridge.  St. Paul’s stops us in our tracks.  Didn’t even know we were going to be this close.  And as we gape up toward the top of the cupola, I notice little tiny moving bodies.  We can climb to the top.  And this dome is the second highest in the world.  Detour underway.

The original church on the site dated from 604 AD.  This version since the 1670s, a part of Christopher Wren’s massive rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1666.

It’s late and we still want to get to the Tate so we hustle to the first leg of the climb – 257 steps up to Whispering Gallery.  We aren’t allowed to take pictures here but it’s a much needed respite for the next hike – another 119 steps to the Stone Gallery.  Small windows provide tiny glimpses as the passageway grows narrower, curving tighter and tighter. And we are so out of shape.

The Stone Gallery is breathtaking, unexpected.  We emerge from the stairwell to a broad walkway that encircles the outside of the dome.

As an aside, I’m afraid of heights. But up still we climb to the Golden Gallery, 528 steps from the cathedral floor. We take a series of spiral staircases and I don’t look down.  I can do this [I silently repeat ad nauseam].

We reach the top.  Grace is ready, fearless.  A quick shot and she’s out the door.

I hold back.  The wind is up, the weather is turning.  The width of the path around the dome at this level is fit for one person.

I hold my breath and take the first step.  London unfolds below. And it is spectacular.

We fight off vertigo on the way down, some serious wall hugging going on.  Next stop Millennium Bridge en route to Tate Modern.

So. It’s a museum.  With some cool, massive art.  Much of it beyond my description and understanding.  As you take in the images below, reflect on featured artist Agnes Martin‘s thoughts.  I think she nails it.

When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in my mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.

We see everything in its perfection. We say a new born baby is beautiful and when we enter a forest we do not see the falling trees and the rotting leaves. We see the perfection and we are inspired. We even hear a silence in the forest that is not really silence.

To progress in life you must give up the things that you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.

This post is getting long.  So here’s another quick recap.  Grace’s computer died which precipitated a trek to the Apple store at Covent Garden.  It abuts the theater district, upscale shops alongside sword swallowers in the square.  Street performance at Covent Garden is serious business and longstanding: it was noted in Samuel Pepys’s diary in May 1662, when he recorded the first mention of a Punch and Judy show in Britain.

Our day included moules frites and impromptu opera under an installation of 100,000 white balloons in the Market Building. You know, a normal Friday.

Saturday brought Joe some much needed respite from a hellish work week. We set out to experience Open House London.  It’s an annual celebration of London’s architecture and design, which allows access to more than 730 venues not normally open to the public – private homes, government buildings, historic sites, educational establishments.

We began with Burlington House.  The main building is at the northern end of the courtyard and houses the Royal Academy, while five learned societies occupy spaces throughout the rest of the courtyard, including the  Geological Society of London, Linnean Society of London,  Society of Antiquaries of London, Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Astronomical Society [which we didn’t see].

My favorite had to be Antiquaries, with their 3 men in a pub origination story, the Bosworth Cross, the Magna Carta.  Our guide was an expert in 15th Century bookbinding. I was in love. Hard. Though I have to say that traipsing through a pad frequented by Darwin was a close second.

It’s the proximity to history that moves me here.  An appreciation and cultivation of who we were and how we got here, all through the study of tangible objects.  To be in the room where Prime Minister Macmillan sacked six cabinet members [Night of the Long Knives] and Winston Churchill worked while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty.  It leaves me a bit breathless.

Now, finally. The word that began this post will end it: Library.

The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library. – Einstein

I couldn’t agree more.