For the first time since September or October, I wore shoes with no socks today. Not because I ran out of clean socks, but because it was a whopping fifty six degrees and sunny outside today. To those of you in ny who have been enjoying unseasonably warm weather for a fortnight already, and think 56 degrees is nothing to write home about, let me just say yes it is. "But I've been wearing my mid-season coat all week!" you might gloat, PSHAW I tell you! Spring is all the more brilliant next to the festering malaise that only a moist, sullen, cold-shouldered British winter brings.
But I'm still ahead of myself. I will try now to be afoot of myself and tell you about the things that have happened.
SO, on February 21st, I attended a "Seven Sisters High Tea" (yehuh). Ok At first when I was invited I was super excited. Who wouldn't be? Free cakes and tea?? Free chance to dress up and pretend you're a grownup who goes to high tea??? Yes please. My friend from Oxford was also invited because she goes to Haaavaad. (Not familiar with the Seven Sisters colleges? Let me save you a trip to wikipedia: The Seven Sisters are seven prestigious liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women's colleges. They are Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College. All were founded between 1837 and 1889. Four are in Massachusetts, two are in New York, and one is in Pennsylvania. Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard College) and Vassar (which is now coeducational) are no longer women's colleges.) If the mention of "prestigious liberal arts colleges" and the thought of historic, New England, argyle-filled campuses hasn't already gotten you cringing a little, it should have. As soon as my friend who I will refer to as C (not to be confused with the uber-organized, safari-going, bicycle-riding boyfriend of best friend N who is also fondly often referred to as C) arrived at the department store where the high tea was being held (http://www.liberty.co.uk/fcp/content/BarsAndRestaurants/content), we looked around for the café. Moving through the lobby looking for a staircase leading cakeward, we saw two other girls and instantly knew they were headed to the same place. Eager as beavers and in such coyly put-together ensembles that their pearl earrings seemed to be blushing, these were definitely Seven Sisters women. They saw us too and before I could pretend to be looking at next spring's tablecloth collection, I was shaking the hands of two fellow Bnardians who were "sooo excited" to meet me! We ran though the How long have you been here? What college are you at? What are you studying? Where are you living? questions and then C suggested we go look for the tea. When we arrived, we were the first ones there and our new acquaintances took a seat at one end of the long, elegantly-set table and C and I raced to the opposite end, waving jovially at the other girls when we sat down, nobody between us. Thankfully, thirty or so more girls and one boy began to fill the seats between us. To my relief, the girl across from me (from Bryn Mawr, the first person I had ever met from there) seemed just as uncomfortable in her sweater set as I felt and we got along famously. The girls sitting to my right, however, were blackberry-wielding cheek-kissing Bnardians who would have been a bore to talk with if they hadn't decided within the first few minutes of talking that they had nothing else to say to me (phew!). I'm making them all sound horrible, but it was really an overall nice mix of ladies (and gentleman). I really do love Bnard, but it's functions like this where I'm supposed to "network"--a word that scares me right out of my flats and pastel cardigan--that make me a little weary of the Bnard community. I know it's filled with go-getters, and I am even friends with some of them (here is one that I love: http://www.worldtravelintern.com/member/
Speaking of wonderful, accomplished people I have finagled into my life, A (who I'm going to start calling M instead because A is a grammar hazard, the worst kind of hazard) visited me the week after the tea. I was so nervous/excited about her coming I organized things in my room I didn't know could be organized. She came for only a few days, but it was such a great visit it felt like a week. She met Dory, Steph and Hannah, all of whom fell in love with her immediately, and saw my studio. She arrived Thursday and on Saturday we went up to Cambridge to visit her friend Abigail who is working on her masters in Renaissance lit there. On the train to Cambridge, however, we made a friend. Her name was Laura and she was 3 years old. She and her "mummy" sat behind us and she would poke her face through our seats to say hi. Her goal, she made clear, was to see horses out the train window. There is nothing cuter than a small child with an English accent. For some reason, it feel like they should have an American accent until they're old enough to take on British one. "Laura just went on a boat to France, didn't you Laura?" her mummy told us, "and what did we see out the window Laura? Go on tell the girls" to which our small friend replied "Horses!" Obviously she had only one animal on her mind that day. We waved goodbye to her as she drove away in a cab once we arrived. *sniffle*
When we met up with Abigail, she took us around the sprawling grounds speckled with century-old castlethingys and to a pub to watch an England v. Ireland rugby match which was full of yelling, celebratory chants, BEER, and authentic English sportsmanship (which mostly involves, well..yelling, testosterone, and beer.) The pub itself had two stories and we were watching the match upstairs. It started pouring while we were inside and we watched the room humidify, the windows fog up, and it made stone-walled room feel like the epicenter of tradition. Albeit sport and machismo-filled, the match will be one of the warmest English memories I will take with me because for one of the first times I felt like I understood the culture better than I did earlier that morning. (It just started raining outside, ah England) The culture all suddenly seemed to make sense: watch sport, get drunk, make food that you want when drunk (fish & chips, fried things), gather in places where these events happen, make sport watching food eating and beer drinking possible in that one place, don't change that place for hundreds of years.
Ok that is a SHAMEFULLy oversimplified synopsis of English culture, but it's not wholly unfounded on true findings. Back to the day-trip, though: Cambridge was beautiful, I thought even more so than Oxford. Wish I had taken pictures. It was really nice to meet M's friend, whom she had built up a lot, and who lived up to all previous praise. We three fawned over our favorite teacher at Bnard who taught the modernist lit class I was in last semester with M. We had to sprint to catch our train back to the city (it's still weird to have "the city" not mean THE city) and when we got back to my place, Dory and Hannah were waiting for us in my dorm's courtyard with CHOCOLATE CAKES. yes!!! SO good. Our friend Marjorie, who's studying at the Cordon Bleu, made them and gave them to us. As you can see, my friend making in London is mostly based on how many free baked goods I will get during my friendship with said person. I think it's a good criteria.
Anyway, M was supposed to leave on Monday, but we missed the check-in to her flight by 15 mins, AgH! I was not-so-secretly glad she got to spend another day, but it's always hard to have plans go awry. So she stayed another night and left the next day after I made her get on the Heathrow Express (an extra-speedy train that goes from Paddington direct to Heathrow) at 7:25, her flight check in at 8:05. Geez, I just couldn't seem to get it together to put her on her way back to ny. I definitely didn't want her to go, and my subconscious made me drag my feet getting us out of the house both times. Many tears on Paddington platform 7 said goodbye, and I got on the 205 bus going back towards school, but when euston station stop came I just didn't feel like getting off the bus. It was only 8 and the studios opened at 9. Instead, I took it to the other end of town to an art supplies store there to get clear gesso and a few other things. When I got off the bus to walk to the store, called Atlantis, I couldn't remember which cross street it was off of, so I asked the person with the hippest glasses which direction to go and he walked me all the way there (random acts of kindness are amplified when you're groggy and puffy-eyed). As we walked through the mostly Indian neighborhood, I realized I hadn't been awake and out&about this early since I had gotten to London (I know I know). It was so sunny and clear, and there were little kids going to school with their mothers in low-swinging dresses and scarves. I felt like it was the first morning I had been in London. I hadn't realized how much I missed being on a schedule with schoolchildren/working people. Being a late-waking college student really takes its toll (this reminds me of one of my favorite poems, which is absolutely not about college students getting up late: http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/104.html). Anyway, all that flight missing and person missing yielded that brilliant morning (brilliant in the French and American sense). We did much more than I'm writing about, but she will have to be Keeper of the details for now.
Next guest up...... drum roll pleaaaseeee... Natalia! She popped over the English Channel or La Manche (the "sleeve") to visit me the next weekend. As I waited for her at St. Pancras, I was besieged by a storm of reuniting couples passionately kissing one another, each more attractive than the last. The gate was clogging up with smooching couples! Where was Natalia! I hopped around through the lovers trying to get a better glimpse of the gate. I recognized a bobbed head shuffling towards me and ran for it. More tears! I had missed her way more than I thought I did. Oh lawd, so emotional! And the chitchatting commenced. Natalia and I met when we were both in a Twos class when her family lived in ny, where she and her younger brother were born. Has legend has it, we were the only ones who could talk in the class, so we became friends. Apparently (says my mom), we would gesticulate madly to one another to elaborate our stories when pushed side-by-side in strollers. We gesticulate less now, but I like to think we have more pithy conversations (I could be wrong..). We got Indian food with our dear friend Juan, also abroad in London from Columbia, which was delish. I was promised amazing Indian food when I came here, and I haven't been disappointed. Not that I have a discerning palate when it comes to generally yummy food, but I think it's especially good. When we got back to my place we somehow talked for two hours before going to bed. The next night we met up with Cat (Cat!) and Gracie (Glaces!) and Sophie, Hannah, Dory and went to this really American bar (that had dancing, so was ok). My flatmate Joe and his friend came along and I think they thought we were all crazy american chicas. Oh Vell! We schwastily looped back to my place and the next day went to the farmers market. (I think I will have to do a whole separate post on the farmers market because it has become a sort of Sunday routine starting the weekend of the tea) We met up with C and his sis, who had both just returned from a safari in Africa--deadserious--and had a lovely dinner with them and his sister's work friends. Natalia left the next day but I wasn't mopey because I was going to see her in a week anyway when I visited with J.
So at the beginning of that week I found out that I was in the student critique that would take place the next Tuesday along with three other kids. Each week, on Tuesday mornings at 10:30, there is a crit of 4-5 students' work where they put up their work, other students and tutors show up, and we all talk about their work for a good twenty minutes. Often times they are harsh, sometimes they're boring, sometimes we get in heated debates, other times everyone's sleepy and uninterested. Either way, it's a bit nerve-wracking to think of being the person getting crat on, and not the ones doing the critiquing. I had a really emotional beginning of that week, crying a lot for what seemed like no reason, working a lot but feeling like nothing was getting finished, and generally just feeling blue. But I discovered something that week which also brought much joy to my heart. I didn't really discover this, as it was happening long before I went, but at a nearby campus, a Hari Krishna gives out free lunch everyday! Steph and Dory and Hannah had been going for weeks, I was just slow on the uptake. He cooks this huge vat of vegetable stew-like thing and plops some of it on top on a helping of rice. He manages to feed (a guesstimated) hundred hungry "Uni" students a day. He's really amazing. Sometimes he has a friend with him, but I don't know how they do it.
That week I saw the Gorky show at Tate Modern--will write about later--and met up with Julianna who was visiting from Rome for a few days. yay! We ate fatty food in a pub t'was like old times.
Then the next weekend J came to visit and I guiltily made him sit in my studio with me as I nervously tried to get things together goddamnit for the crit. That Friday we went out with my flatmate Amelia and some of her friends which was a really good time. We went to the Williamsburg equivalent (hasids (sp?) and all) to this warehouse gig and felt cool and we got hounded by this British guy named Aug (short for Augustine) about every American stereotype there could possibly be. In his defense, the only experience he had had of America was through a segway tour through suburban Chicago, so we couldn't really blame him. We just kept reminding him that America was really really big, and had different parts to it, like a cow.
The crit Tuesday went really well! Lots of healthy criticism and lots of good discussion. A lot of people were fired up by the use of the British finacial Times in some of the drawings I put up, and they made me realize that I wanted to try and harness that loadedness instead of shy away from it. It wasn't a very form-based discussion, but it made me see what other people saw when they looked at my work, which was really helpful. It was also helpful to find out the criticism doesn't hurt if you stand behind your work (not physically use it as a shield, you know what i mean). The day after, we eurostared it to Paris! soooooooo loveellyy. Just stepping off the train made me remember how much I loved it there. oy! There is nothing ugly to look at in that city! We stayed at J's cousin's apartment who is a chef and works in...the Eiffel Tower. yeha. In the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately, he was working very hard at being a chef and we only got to hang with him a bit.
(I'm sorry I'm rushing through this part, I will elaborate more in week or so, but I have to leave on a plane tomorrow with C (from Oxford) to go to Italy!)
We saw Natalia, Embo (yes!), and Glaces for dinner one night which was yum, had an AMAzing French meal the next night at a place suggested by Natalia, went to the Louve Pompidou Musee D'Orsay, went to an art history class with Nata (I did, J wandered wistfully around the park), walked a lot, ate 6 pain au chocolats, took the metro, gazed at everything, felt so lucky to be in such a beautiful place.
The smell of the metro was so familiar, and it reminded me of being fifteen in Paris with Natalia. The smell of J's cousin's staircase, of moist old wood, took me back to New Orleans summer smell. Of Alex's house there.
All tuckered out, we came back on Saturday and J left Sunday. (I promise to write more ! of how good it felt to be in paris again, how gracie has Spiderman in her house, how I wore stupid shoes to be hip. worth it. coming back so tired on eurostar, how the French and English landscapes are so different and so different from america)
Below are some pics of my work. Mhrrr. Tomorrow veni vedi vici and Italian FOOD! First time going to Italy. Stops along the way are: Florence, Assisi, Siena, Cortona, Rome, the Amalfi Coast, and Sicily. Phew!
