yeah baby, hold it right there

Smithsonian, round 3.

I decided it was time to hit American History, so went down sorta first thing in the morning. Mildly alarmed by the crowds of descending school children, I got to the door and saw that they also had extended hours until 7:30. I decided to come back later.

What to do until then? The nifty thing about the Mall is the amount of free museums to see, all within walking distance. And did I mention free? All the Smithsonians, and a few other non-Smithsonian museums are free. Free free free. I haven't dropped a dime for admission anywhere. DC residents, you don't know how lucky you are to have this. I surveyed my options:

The Holocaust Museum has lines coming out of every orifice.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing tours were fully booked for the day.

I dropped in briefly at the Museum of African Art. African art doesn't stir any passions in me, but according to their website, there is one Yinka Shonibare piece in the collection. I stopped at the info desk to see if it was on display, and the woman there didn't know offhand, but started calling the docents to see if they knew. No one knew about it, which didn't bode well. I wandered around for 15 minutes while info lady Rosalie did some more research for me, and most of those 15 minutes were spent finding and walking the stairs. It isn't a very big gallery, and half of it was closed of for installations. I can't recommend it, except for the information desk service.

Seeing as it was cold and rainy, the next closest museum on the list was the National Gallery of Art. I totally recommend this. Art and sculpture from everywhere, predominantly (if not all) Western. Starting out in the medieval and renaissance galleries, I amused myself by picking out oddball details in religious and allegorical painting, since they are always loaded with imagery and symbolism, most of which I don't understand and only read about afterwards. Is this supposed to be a cherub? If one of these came fluttering up to me I'd probably reach for the nearest rolled up newspaper. And check out the chompers on the happy horse from c. 1500.


It took me over three hours to wander through. I realized near the end that my shoes were squeaking really loudly every time I crossed a gallery.


Best in show - Jan van Eyck's Annunciation (for superb technique, not subject matter).

Museum of American History - I finally got there around 4:00, and it was still an utter zoo. As if every middle school within ten miles was having a field trip day. I made an attempt to escape into exhibits less attractive to teens (Jazz Composers), but really, it was lost cause. I just had to endure sweaty screaming bedlam for a couple of hours before it cleared out enough to wander freely. I don't know what's up with the newer museums here, but they all suffer from poorly-designed layout. I felt like I spent more time than I should walking between exhibits. Granted, I was moving around to avoid the crowd, but I lost track of how many times I went up and down the escalators, then crossed from one wing to another. Going late is really the way to do it. When I first arrived, long lines were waiting to get into several of the more popular exhibits (Lincoln, First Ladies), but biding my time in the less crowded exhibits allowed me to waltz straight in after most of the tweeners and families had left. There really are bunch of fine items to see - the Star Spangled Banner, displayed in low light to slow its deterioration, Lincoln's top hat, the be-sequined ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, engines enough to put a sparkle in any steampunk's eye. Some of the exhibits, or certain aspects within, are obviously geared more towards the kiddies, and I suppose American History, Natural History, and Air and Space more than the other museums have an inherent appeal to the masses of all ages, and the curators need to find balance between displaying what they have in their collections, displaying what they have in their collections in the context of a themed exhibit, being educational, and being fun. I don't think they always succeed. But should I really complain? It's all free. And...

Best in show - Oscar the Grouch!


Yesterday was tax day. I walked by the IRS a couple of days ago. I bet it's a feeding frenzy in there today. They probably hand out celebratory cupcakes.

perfect imperfect

Back to the Mall and the Smithsonians. I stopped walking and just started taking the Metro. I wish BART could be like the Metro. Cheap, roomy cars that don't have seats upholstered in grimy cloth, and trains that run fairly frequently. I don't understand why the Bay Area, which claims to be so very progressive and environmentally conscious, has such a shoddy public transit system. Even Ukraine has better public transit systems that the Bay Area.

I'm a perfectionist when I make things. I want it all to be perfect, which means I spend hours figuring out how to knit backwards out of mistakes I don't realize until two rows later, hacksawing apart welds that weren't put together at the correct angle, taking years to finish other pieces because I can't settle on the right design of one aspect or another, and spending way too much time writing blog posts trying to get the wording just right (and then correcting misspelled words as I find them later). But, what defines perfect? If the knitting mistake doesn't cause my scarf to unravel, why don't I just leave it it? I've been noodling on this recently. Striving towards what I consider perfection makes me waste a lot of time and energy. It makes me afraid to try things because they won't be right, won't be what I want, or won't be good enough. I get hung up on an outcome that hasn't even happened yet. I'm afraid to try. I'm trying to stop doing that, trying to muscle my way past my hang-ups about what might be, and just do. Just do and if it isn't right, just do over. I don't have an answer yet. Maybe there is no perfect. If there is no perfect, is everything perfect? I wouldn't go that far.

Freer Gallery of Art - Mostly Asian art, and a few rooms of American painters. The objects that prompted my musings on perfection were broken bowls and vases that had been mended in the Japanese style of using silver, gold, and lacquer to highlight the mend, rather than try to conceal it. It adds character, and in some cases, value to each piece. And, gorgeous. Better for its imperfection. If I hadn't caught the docent's explanation, or read the signage, I probably would have thought the mends were just freehanded designs in the glaze. This wasn't the best example, but it was for photographic purposes because of the contrast.

The ceramics were the kicker of the collection, not for their shapes, but for their exquisite glazing, both on repaired and unbroken vessels. To me, glazing is a black art. Where to even begin - to control heat, chemicals, compounds, and who know what other factors to get the range of effects that were on display. And further, to be able to deduce which ingredient and action had which effect, and then to reproduce it. If I were given the job of glazing a bunch of pottery, those Japanese repair artists would have a lot of work on their hands.

Sackler Gallery - more Asian art. The Freer and the Sackler are both part of the Asian Art collection, and are connected via a tunnel since most of the Sackler is underground. I was starting to lose track of things a bit by then, both which country I was in, and whether it was B.C. or A.D.

Arts and Industries Building - Closed for Renovation. Boohoo! Cue hound dogs baying mournfully.


Hirshhorn Museum - Every arachnophobe's worst nightmare is squatting in front of the Hirshhorn, bigger than life and with really pointy legs. It's Louise Bourgeois' Crouching Spider, and it looks like it's facing off with the Hirshhorn itself. Bourgeois' mother was a tapestry weaver and restorer, so her spiders represent maternal protectiveness. I once had a daddy longlegs living in my bathroom, up in the corner, and one day a little egg sac appeared in the web with what was now established as a her. Despite the fact that nothing else was ever in the bathroom except me, she sat in the web all day, egg sac firmly in her clutches, abandoning it only for short periods of time, until one day it spawned a bunch of barely visible baby spiders, and that was that. I don't know what happened to them because they really were very teeny. That daddy longlegs changed my view on spiders; before then I would simply tolerate them in my apartments, but after that I started liking it when they showed up.

But my daddy longlegs are wispy and insubstantial, and Bourgeois' look like they could crush a Mini Cooper like I would crush a soda can, skewer it onto one of its pointy feet, flick it into the Hirshhorn fountain, and then skittle off down the Mall to climb the Capitol dome. Which led me to more pondering on the perfect. My brain frequently equates perfect with neat. Which means messed up stitches and blobby welds are not perfect, and need to be fixed. The spiders are all of metal, and the legs are made it of pieces of metal tube. If you step back a few feet, the irregularities in the construction make it appear as if they are rippling with muscles. If you go up close, all that metal is put together with really messy welds - big, blobby, uneven, and splattered. Step back again, and all that non-neatness, on top of the sinewy metal, gives the legs an bumpy organic texture which make it more interesting and alive than if it were a smooth surface. Not that it's more perfect or imperfect either way, it's that looking at this piece up close made me think of what I might be missing when I strive to make something perfect, according to my own system of values. It made me want to go be messy. And it reminded me that I really need to get out more to see Art.

Museum of Natural History - meh. The animal mummies are neat. I suppose the big attractions are the other animal displays (live, stuffed, and floating around decomposing in jars), but what was unexpectedly cool was the minerals and gem display. Not the ones fashioned into jewelry, except the Hope Diamond (more on that in a sec), but the ones in their natural state. It's Nature at its most punk rock, cabaret can can showgirl kicking up her legs and showing frilly underthings flamboyance with wacky shapes, wacky colors, and wackier molecular formulas (scapolite = (Na,Ca)4(Si,Al)12O24(Cl,Co3,So4). There will be a quiz tomorrow).

I couldn't get close enough to see any of jewelry gems, so I just skipped that room. I did make a point of checking out the Hope Diamond. I don't care for diamonds, They just look like bits of glass to me, and I don't particularly care for glass objects, either, although I enjoy watching it being blown and shaped. The diamond is a lovely shade of midnight blue, but more interesting than the diamond itself are nifty and confounding facts surrounding it. Such as:

- It was originally over twice as big as it is now. Why anyone, Louis XIV included, would cut it down isn't addressed. Isn't the point of owning a really big fancy diamond to own a really big fancy diamond?
- One of its 20th century owners, Evalyn Walsh McLean, would stash it in the sofa, and reputedly modeled it on her Great Dane, Mike. God I really hope both of those are true. But who names their dog Mike?
- It phosphoresces a red-orange after being exposed to ultraviolet light.
- When it was donated to the Smithsonian in 1958 by Harry Winston, it was mailed - mailed! - from New York to Washington. The postal insurance cost $145.29, which I'm sure was more than the cost of a round trip ticket. I guess people were a little more trusting in those days.

I still don't know what perfect it, but I think I'm not so obsessed with it anymore.

need more craft, fewer artifacts

Visiting DC started out as wanting to visit the Smithsonian, so without further ado I hoofed it down to the Mall to start my excursions. First stop:

Renwick Gallery. Home of American Art and, more of interest to me, Craft. It's gotta be in one of the smallest Smithsonian buildings, a house from 1861 that was DC's first art museum. The downstairs was devoted to an special exhibition of the architecture and decorative arts of Henry and Charles Greene, which is quite good - lots of furniture, right up my alley. Bits of the permanent collection are displayed upstairs, and the best in show is i am no one by Beth Cavener Stichter. holy moly. It's unsettling to look at, yet I couldn't stop. It's not Craft, at least not in the manner that I think of as Craft, but I've been mulling over whether or not it's Sculpture. I suppose technically it is, but it's not the first term that comes to mind when I look at it. I'm content to think of it as Art. Whatever it is, it's riveting. Tucked into one corner of the room, it made everything else in that space not matter. I took a bunch of photos, but will be violating some copyright law if I post them, so you'll need to go look at her website. The pictures there are better, anyway.

Museum of the American Indian = information overload number one. Stymied perhaps by my admittedly limited-to-high-school education of the Native American, I had some trouble grounding myself anywhere in the exhibit. Objects from 10,000 years of Native heritage in both North and South America, from all tribal affiliations, with descriptive and historical literature splashed everywhere, and multiple television screens broadcasting interviews and videos, over speakers gently pumping out Native recordings left me lost. And the layout of the exhibits follow curving walls that separate different points of interest, but also make it sort of hard to navigate with any sense of order. Maybe you're not supposed to. I think I spent almost three hours in there, which was a bit too long, although some of that was at lunch. It's actually sort of hard to find food on the Mall, unless you want a hot dog from a cart. All the buildings are hulking, federal institutions, and anything not one of those is at least one block away. I think this is actually a good thing, because the architectural presentation of these freaking huge buildings isn't interrupted by some food joint. Instead, lots of the museums have cafes, and the one here is the best, featuring foods from different Indian cultures. It's typically overpriced, but worth at least one meal. I might even go back for another some day. You grab a tray, browse what the various sections have to offer, and pick up what you want, cafeteria style. I got fry-bread with berry compote and a rather delicious veggie tamale. Sturdy vittles. Fortified, I went back to the exhibits, by which point things were making a little more sense, or else by then I had stopped caring about my fragmented viewing experience.

One of the current temporary exhibitions is Comic Art Indigène, which explores storytelling through comics and comic-inspired art, mostly focusing on contemporary art, but there are a few examples of ancient rock and ceramic art. I liked the women superheroes by skater chick Jolene Nenibah Yazzie, because women superheroes are always badass, and also because Jolene received early inspiration from Wonder Woman's long luxurious black hair. But, there are at least two glaring oversights in this exhibition; first, not a scribble from the Hernandez Brothers. How could an exhibit on comics + Native Americans not include Palomar? Second, an issue of The New Mutants is in the Stereotype Cavalcade (reflecting both good and bad stereotypes). I'm not sure if the curator thought Psyche/Dani Moonstar is a good or a bad stereotype, but what they really should have included is Bill Sienkiewicz's cover art for the Demon Bear run, because, damn, that's one amazing cover.

Other than the comics, the random object of interest was a pair of bull-roarers, and only because I made a bunch of these for a sound designer a couple of months ago. Before then they wouldn't have turned my head, because I didn't know what a bull-roarer was.

Museum of Air and Space = information overload number two. I sorta only went there because it was (a) right across the street from the Museum of the American Indian and (b) open late (seeing as it was past 5pm). I think I would have gotten more of a kick out of this if I had visited when I was twelve. Rockets, planes, capsules, astronaut fecal matter bags, missiles, stewardess uniforms, lumps of lunar rock, you name it, anything that can fly, anything that has flown in a manmade contraption, and anything related to flying is probably there in one form or another. Eyes glazed over by all the shiny surfaces, I found the more vintage displays more to my taste. In WWII, airmen were distinguished by their soft caps, which had to be that way to allow headsets to fit around their heads. Hats repeatedly jammed into bags and pockets would crumple them at an accelerated rate, allowing the wearer to appear more veteran than they perhaps really were. I'm not sure if this was to impressive senior officers or dames. I'm guessing dames. Those dashing white parachute silk scarves didn't do anything to hurt the cause, either. Plus they kept necks warm and prevented chafing otherwise caused by the constant swiveling of the head to scan for enemy fighters. Who woulda thunk that something so simple would be so multipurpose? I'm pretty sure those high tech fecal matter bags had only one purpose.

sometimes you just want a popsicle

First two days in DC were spent wandering around and burning off extra fat I've acquired from long hours of (paid) sloth behind a computer. Plus after spending a day on a plane, I wanted some fresh air. I'm staying in the U Street Corridor, and seeing as how I'm a big believer in seeing things other than the main tourist attractions, walked down 16th Street until I ran into the White House. It's a white house with a fence and nice green lawn - and lots of not-so-Secret Service hanging around outside in Secret Service Vans and wearing Secret Service wind-breakers (it was raining). There were a handful of lackluster protesters for various causes across the street, but overall there wasn't a whole lot going on, so I skirted around it and made the mistake of walking around to the front, which has a really narrow sidewalk in front, or maybe it just seems really narrow when full of tourists. After jamming my way through I made a beeline for the Tidal Basin, but the cherry blossom bomb had mostly fizzled by then. The rain was keeping the hordes away, but it and the wind had blown down most of the blossoms. A few were still hanging on, and the ground was an expanse of pink polka dots.

Moving back in time, I stopped at the memorial monuments to FDR, Jefferson, and Washington, by which time it had cleared up. I hung out for a rest at the base of the Washington monument, watching the illusion of the tower swaying against the sky. I couldn't look for too long. I don't like heights, and that goes both ways. Looking up at tall buildings makes my insides do funny things. Kind of like bits of me go off balance to compensate for the vertigo, but they all do it in different ways.
Heading down the Mall to the Capitol Building, I stopped at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. I'm not a huge fan of sculpture, especially modern, abstract sculpture - I just don't get it. If someone wants to explain it to me, I'll listen and try to understand. It's not so much that I don't like it - I just don't understand what makes it valuable as a piece of art, and I can't appreciate it as a connoisseur or art history major would. But I can appreciate publicly displayed art, no matter what the form, so the garden as a whole I found quite nice. I suppose the one cheesy sculpture, if you want to call it that, is Yoko Ono's Wishing Tree. Which is a live, very branchy little bush with scraps of paper skewered on the branches, upon which people have scrawled wishes. I read a few that were still hanging on, the others having blown off and littered the garden (it's okay, it's Art). Lots were sappy wishes for world peace, healthy children, prosperity, and happy, dull relationships, so I was pleased to find one utterly selfish wish, no doubt posted by some cranky kid.

Took a break on the steps of the Capitol, walked to the back (or the front? there's a statue representing freedom on top of the dome, and her back is to the Mall), circled around the Supreme Court and Library of Congress, by which point it was dark and most of the tourists had presumably staggered back to their hotels, exhausted by an excess of American history and bickering with one another (I like eavesdropping on the bickering). I rambled back home along Pennsylvania Avenue and up 13th or 14th, catching part of a fireworks show over the Potomac while standing on 7th Street. No idea what the occasion was, and I could only see the ones that shot over a building which was in the way, but it was still a good show. Stopped at a Whole Foods to pick up a dinner of crusty bread, nice cheese, an assortment of olives, and red grapes. I could happily eat some variation of that for dinner every day of the week. Vacation from work is also a vacation from cooking; I like to cook, but rarely want to spend the time it takes to make a meal. I prefer food to appear in front of me, ready to eat. And if that doesn't happen, something simple and delicious is the next best thing. By the time I got home it was after ten. I thought about doing some reading to plan the next day, but after eating, all I did was fall asleep.

Which meant Easter Sunday wasn't too well thought out. Sort of still on California time, I dragged myself out of bed past nine in the morning. Two steps out the bedroom and Gatsby flies over to my shoulder. I didn't really realize until now that birds make a lot of noise when flying. Gatsby approaching is heralded by a fluteyflutteringwhirry noise, and then you don't really feel him land because, well, he's as light as a little bird. It's more like you sense his presence. My host Antonia make me coffee - it's that appearing food thing I like so much!

I walked to the beaux arts Union Station down Massachusetts Avenue. DC is a very airy town. Lots of the buildings are low, the streets are quite wide, and the sidewalks are really roomy. And maybe because it was Sunday, and Easter to boot, there was almost no one around. For some reason I rather enjoy deserted neighborhoods full of imposing structures. After kicking up my heels in Union Station, I headed to the Eastern Market for a drastic change in scenery - large, institutional structures and ugly modern condos replaced by rowhouses. The neighborhood was equally attractive for exactly the opposite reasons. The Eastern Market was a bust - the Market itself burned a couple of years ago, and the temporary location was closed, maybe because it was Easter, and I wasn't interested in any of the other vendors, except the crepe cart, which was doing brisk business. The pretzel guy next at the stand next door must be seething in bitterness and large salt crystals all day. After a cursory wander about the neighborhood, I hopped the Metro to Smithsonian, and walked down the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial. I didn't realize that a tribute concert to Marian Anderson's 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert was happening, and showed up just as Denyce Graves took the podium to belt out a few tunes. Talk about serendipitous timing. There was also a guy walking a ginger tabby on a leash, but my timing there wasn't so good - I missed the picture because I was fumbling with my camera.

After listening to Denyce, I toured the four war memorials in proximity to Lincoln - the Vietnam War Memorial, Women's Vietnam War Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and DC WWI Memorial. So, I don't know anyone who died in a war, either personally or via any degree of separation, and I hardly know anyone who has served in the armed forces. I don't have any personal connection to these events and monuments. I can only appreciate them as memorial to the event itself, and as a commentary on war in general. I didn't like the Korean War Memorial at all. I found it garish and ugly. War is garish and ugly, but I don't think that was the point. Maybe I'm just spoiled by all those Berninis and Michelangelos I saw in Italy, but I thought the sculptures were amateurish, and the whole thing just far too literal. Same goes for the Vietnam Women's Memorial, but on this day it was set off by the presence of several lilies bearing Happy Easter wishes to several women from one Doc Spresser. The Vietnam Memorial, on the other hand, while literal in quite another sense of the word, I liked. It's simple and elegant, quietly making a poignant statement, and is a lot smaller than I for some reason thought it would be. The DC WWI Memorial is a Doric temple buried in the trees, and almost no one goes there. Dedicated in 1931, the inscription refers only to The World War, since only one had happened by that point.

Today - it's time to hit the Smithsonian.

cheese skipper goes to washington

Ahoy! I have emerged from my subterranean, temperature regulated cheese cave for a jaunt to our nation's capitol. Cherry blossoms, chili, and Obama!

It was an oddly symmetrical journey from one end to another. Walk to BART, ride BART, catch AirBART to airport, takeoff, land (Salt Lake City), takeoff, land (Chicago Midway), takeoff, land (Washington), catch Metro bus to Metro, ride Metro, walk to lodging. BART and the Metro even function identically. I almost lost my luggage in Salt Lake City. I didn't get too much sleep the night before, so I settled into the very back row of the airplane for a snooze. This also gave me a front-row seat to luggage hold comings and goings, where I saw my trusty rucksack going when it shouldn't be. What the? I gotta hand it to the Southwest flight attendants who scrambled to get it back, and seemed more upset than me about the whole issue. I got to walk out of the back galley door of the aircraft onto the lift of the food services truck to yell at the luggage handlers on where to find my bag - "Under the flowery suitcase!" Awesome. Two hours into vacation and I'm already having fun!

The leg from Chicago to DC was packed with a womens soccer team, all of them wearing identical Puma tracksuits and toting Puma gym bags. It's either in their contract to advertise, or maybe that's just how they find each other, like tiger cubs recognizing mom's stripes and ear patches. When I think if Pumas, I think of those 80s sneakers with zippy pockets on the side. I guess it sounded like a good idea at the time.

Arriving in DC very much in a state where I shouldn't operate heavy machinery, my host took me out to the local institution of Ben's Chili Bowl for dinner. We sat at the counter eating veggie chili, chocolate shakes, and a bushel of fries drowned in cheese sauce, and watching the patrons come and go.


More on where I'm staying later, but there's a resident budgie here. Gatsby flies around landing on shoulders and heads, likes to take baths in water glasses, and grooms humans.

this skipper has sailed

What kind of numbskull would bother living in a city that has barely any public transportation running after midnight? And what's that smell? The local drivers are keen to demonstrate their profound lack of driving skills, and alarming impatience. People are loud and garrulous, but maybe I'm just noticing because I can understand them. On the other hand, 24-hour diners serve breakfast at 2:00 in the morning, keeping alive the holy tradition of the bottomless cup of coffee. Self-service laundromats are cheap. This bed is pretty comfy. Seems sorta familiar...hey, wait a sec, I'm home!


Twenty-four hours of transit on a bus, the Underground, two airplanes, and a Kia Rio got me from London to Oakland. I had to leave early, and London was still strewn with festal detritus.


With spare time at Heathrow, and a few extra pence in my pocket, I seized one more opportunity for cheese (two, actually. I also bought an aged cheddar sandwich). Okay, it's a packet of snack crackers, but given the deep love of Britons for packaged nibbles, is fairly appropriate to the place.

For the last few nights I've dreamt I was still traveling. I don't know where, I just felt like I was Somewhere Else. I tend to fall asleep with the lights on; a result of whatever personality trait I have that makes me try to do more than I'm really capable of accomplishing in one day. I must have been staring at things in my apartment while still technically asleep, and even though they are all familiar objects, they morphed into something foreign and I didn't know where I was. When I woke up it took a few minutes to realize I was home. There's some nice things about being home. I no longer need to have a wad of toilet tissue in my pocket at all times. I have drawers full of clean underwear and socks. I can use a nice fluffy towel instead of the lightweight rectangle of chamois-felt that I've been carrying around, and can run out the hot water without feeling guilty. I no longer need to rotate between my two pairs of trousers. I can buy groceries without limiting myself to only items that I can eat in two days. And I can spread my things around without worrying that I'll leave something behind or that someone will swipe anything. But these are all small things, minor conveniences. I'd still rather be wearing the same shirt for three days, not understanding what the person in the grocery store is saying to me, and being in new and different places every few days.

A rug salesman in Turkey – the one who didn't try to sell me anything – taught me a nice word over tea: inşallah. Literally translated, it means if god wishes, but it's not necessarily weighted with any religious sentiment. It really expresses the sentiment of I hope. Potentially sappy, but it's poetic enough to avoid any saccharine wallowing. I hope I get another opportunity to go out and see the world. There's a whole lot out there that I didn't get around to visiting.

Thanks for reading this blog. It's been fun, but challenging, challenging, but fun. I may try it again the next time, but for now, I'm going to go read a book in the bathtub.

Toodles!

the sparkling sky

Flying from Tallinn to London's Stansted Airport takes about two and half hours, which is coincidentally also the amount of time it takes to then cross London to Dulwich. Buying my bus tickets I did my best to avoid thinking about the exchange rate between the dollar and the pound. It borders on highway robbery and makes my stomach feel a little squiggy. Fortunately the only thing I had to purchase during my two days in town was transportation to and from the airports. The bus ride from the airport to Victoria turned into a mini drive-by of tourist central; the sun had long set, and I was idly staring out the window when we went around a corner and there was the Tower and Tower Bridge, all lit up and looking splendid. We continued right past Parliament, and swarms of tourists pointing cameras in every direction. I stopped taking pictures about a month ago. Most of what I've shot recently has been based on its blog potential.

London is a fine town, as some old anonymous ballad goes, a great and gallant city. I like how cities have their histories hiding in plain sight. It's all there to see, but a lot of the time you either have to already know what to look for, or have a good guide. Friends gave me a rather cool tour of the East End, which is sadly losing its seedy charm as the rich move in and spiffify the streets. We had a drink at the The Ten Bells Pub, where Jack the Ripper's victims boozed away their free time and tuppence, probably trying to forget their dreary lives before meeting their bloody, organ-strewn ends. Remarkably, the only indication of its historical reputation is three pages from a Victorian broadsheet with cartoons of the events on the wall of the stairwell leading to the toilet. I didn't take the time to read through them all, since the overpowering miasma in the stairwell gave every nasal indication that it had also been there since 1888. Other than original Victorian wall tiles, and tarty bottled Victorian Lemonade, the joint doesn't have a whole lot to recommend itself. We had a much better time hanging in another pub that I'm not going to name to keep it a secret. Perfectly unassuming, it looked exactly like a living room with chamber pots hanging high on the walls, and a piano and an accordion lurking in the corner waiting for anyone with a modicum of talent and knowledge of pub tunes to come along and bring them to life. The dame behind the bar refused to serve us drinks until we each blew up a balloon to contribute to their New Year's festivities. They even had a bagpiper, complete in Scottish regalia, and I was really hoping for a tune, but it was too early for proper piping, he was purely pootling around with them.

We stood on Fournier Street and wondered which house belongs to Gilbert and George, and not long after that, a few blocks away, espied them walking down the street behind us. I was slightly tempted to tail them home, but really wasn't that interested. Nicholas Hawksmoor's Christ Church was looming a mere half-block from where we were standing, vying for, and winning, my attention. I've developed a new interest in reading history as a result of traveling, and two hours in the East End only reaffirmed this desire, especially as it concerns the esoteric and bizarre.

Just past midnight, we were all standing atop a hill with glasses of bubbly, watching the sky sparkle around a 180° panorama of the greater London skyline. We were miles from the Embankment fireworks inferno, but could see them low on the horizon, and even the Millennium Wheel when it lit up. What with all the official borough displays and backyard arsonists contributions, it was like standing in the trenches, explosions and rockets whistling through the air, except without the death and destruction. On that night, it was just colorful and celebratory.

It was a good way to end 2007.