Tagged: london

The London Train

It was a relief, to state the thing with such finality–as if she made it exist as an object to contemplate stony with clean lines and hard edges. With the loss of her parents behind her, and the loss of the babies she might have had ahead, she was withdrawn out of the past and future into this moment of herself, like a barren island, or a sealed box.

The London Train, Tessa Hadley

The London trainTessa Hadley; Harper Perennial 2011WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder 

It took me two years to finish Tessa Hadley’s The London Train, not because it’s a terribly long and challenging book but because I had trouble caring very deeply about Paul and Cora, the characters at the novel’s heart. They aren’t unlikeable, necessarily, nor especially likeable either; they were simply not very interesting–I didn’t find myself wanting desperately enough to know what was going to happen next to keep going.

This isn’t to say it’s a badly written book; it’s not. Hadley’s writing is on a par with Alice Munro, William Trevor, or Ian McEwan; I picked this book up because I’ve loved her short stories, which are sharp and insightful and present characters who are realistically attractive and repulsive in just the right mix. Not only is it well-written, it’s interestingly structured: chronology is turned inside out, and the parallel narratives–first Paul, then Cora–plays with perspective and tone, giving two very distinct flavors to Paul and Cora’s affair.

Alas, the main characters turn out to be the least interesting characters in the novel. Cora’s husband Robert, an outwardly staid civil servant who has a history of walking away from commitments; Paul’s neighbors, Welsh farmers with designs on the land on the property line; Paul’s daughter’s boyfriend, a Polish immigrant squatting in London with his sister and engaged in a shady import/export scheme; even the nameless exiled Iranian poet who dies in an immigration holding center; all of these characters are infinitely more interesting than Paul and Cora, and would make for interesting stories and possibly even a novel in their own right. Had the novel been boiled down to a story, or perhaps two stories that mirror each other and hinge on the chance meeting that leads to the affair, the banality of Paul and Cora might not have been a problem; but their consciousnesses are simply too slender to hold up 200 pages.

Evening Harvest: May 13, 2012

Eat Drink Mammalogist Woman

Eating in the field can have the same dislocated, heightened quality that accompanies foreign travel. Far from the comforts of home, you find yourself cooking with people who you’ve only ever seen hunched over a lab bench. (You mean, they eat, too?).

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A Profile of London by A.A. Gill

If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

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David Simon | Welcome to Florida. Beware of gunmen standing their ground

That these laws sailed through legislatures and were signed by governors is indicative of a craven national culture, a panicked bunker mentality that now approaches the pathological.

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Neil Gaiman’s Journal: Popular Writers: A Stephen King interview.

“They pay me absurd amounts of money,” he observes, “For something that I would do for free.”

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The Impasse: When the “truth wins” assumption fails.

When we convey facts to an audience that doesn’t want to hear them, we come to an impasse. The stronger the pre-existing belief, the stronger the motivation to dismiss the contrary evidence and the journalists who convey it. And there’s not much journalists can do about this.

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Cindy Sherman’s Vintage Notecard

Fair Deceiver: I did not know until last night that you had a glass eye.

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How to End This Depression by Paul Krugman

The truth is that recovery would be almost ridiculously easy to achieve: all we need is to reverse the austerity policies of the past couple of years and temporarily boost spending. Never mind all the talk of how we have a long-run problem that can’t have a short-run solution—this may sound sophisticated, but it isn’t. With a boost in spending, we could be back to more or less full employment faster than anyone imagines.

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Of Bedrooms and Boardrooms – Robert Reich

We’re not in trouble because gays want to marry or women want to have some control over when they have babies. We’re in trouble because CEOs are collecting exorbitant pay while slicing the pay of average workers, because the titans of Wall Street demand short-term results over long-term jobs, and because of a boardroom culture that tolerates financial conflicts of interest, insider trading, and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign “donations.”

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Pulitzer Prize Winning German Photographer Horst Fass Dies – SPIEGEL ONLINE

“Horst was one of the biggest talents of our time,” AP’s editor in chief Kathleen Carroll said. He was “a fearless photographer and a courageous journalist.”

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Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? – NYTimes.com

Then last spring, the psychologist treating Michael referred his parents to Dan Waschbusch, a researcher at Florida International University. Following a battery of evaluations, Anne and Miguel were presented with another possible diagnosis: their son Michael might be a psychopath.

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Ronnie Scott’s, 1989: my (literal) brush with fame

Hugh MasekelaA recent article in The Guardian about the 50th anniversary of London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s reminded me of my own visit to the Soho music venue in 1989, the club’s 30th anniversary year. It was one of the best performances, jazz or otherwise, that I’ve seen, and a memorable adventure all in all.

I was a student at Queen Mary College, living in the Redbridge suburb of South Woodford; British professors set a very low bar for American students, so I took advantage of their deflated expectations and explored the city every chance I got. While in Soho, I stumbled on Ronnie Scott’s, which one of my professors back home had mentioned, and I saw that Hugh Masekela was going to be playing soon. It was a couple years after his album “Tomorrow” had come out, the era of divestment from South Africa’s apartheid regime and growing interest in “world music,” and “Bring Him Back Home” was on my personal soundtrack.

I couldn’t interest any of my friends in going to see Masekela, but my roommate and one of our English friends decided that they’d go to a seedy “bed show” in the neighborhood and joined me on the Central Line ride to Soho. We parted ways near Ronnie Scott’s, they giggling like schoolboys and me anxious to hear a musical legend.

It was standing room only at the club, and I found myself a dark corner with a not-too-bad view of the stage. My entertainment budget took quite a hit from the cover charge, so I had to ration the two bottles of Newcastle Brown I could afford very carefully. The first bottle lasted through the opening act–I recall it was a London quartet, doing a bop-inspired set–and I made my way to the bar for my second bottle before Masekela was scheduled to start.

As I stepped up to hand over my last wrinkled notes for a beer, the man in the queue in front of me suddenly turned around and bumped into me. He was a short man, solidly built, wearing a dark jacket; he mumbled “Excuse me” in a melodious South African accent and disappeared into the crowd. I got my drink and went back to my corner. It wasn’t until Masekela took the stage a few minutes later that I realized that it was, in fact, South Africa’s great trumpet player who had collided with me at the bar.

I don’t remember the specifics of set list. “Grazing in the Grass” was performed, and a couple songs from “Tomorrow,” but most of it was straight-ahead jazz with a hint of South African rhythm. Masekela was animated, his distinctive playing bright and round, but he made sure the share the spotlight with the rest of his band. Even in my distant corner, the club had a warm and intimate feeling, and even if I hadn’t had that bar-side collision I would have felt that I had come close to one of the best players in modern jazz.

After the show, I made my way out of Soho and caught the night bus home; I recall it as a slightly-scary, dream-like tour through darker streets than I had ever seen before. It was well past midnight when I got to my room, and I was surprised to find my roommate already sound asleep. I put “Tomorrow” on my Walkman and lay on my bed, exhausted.

The coda came in the morning, when I saw the “bed show” aficionados at breakfast to compare notes. Their entertainment was a lot less than they had been promised: they paid a high cover charge and drank over-priced beers while watching an empty bed on a dark stage, images of bikini-clad women flashing on the screen above; after what seemed hours, a woman in a bikini came on stage, sat down on the bed, did some desultory and uninspired rolling around for a few minutes, then left with her bikini intact; then the lights went up and they were hurried out for the next group of suckers valued customers to take their places.

It would appear, at least in the Soho district, that there’s an inverse proportion of sizzle to steak. Ronnie Scott’s, dark and unassuming as it was, offered far more than the cover charge suggested it would. I look forward to taking in another show there some time in its next fifty years of magic.

Your kisses have a taste of hello

Your kisses have a taste of hello,
a constant moment of greeting
even when they’re meant to send me away;
a habit of doors ajar and curtains half open,
a song of broken chords and sharp sevenths
left suddenly, achingly incomplete.
We said goodbye like an old photograph,
though without the sailor suit, the ’40s dress,
the embarrassing embrace and spinning about
or hanging out of windows;
as I tossed my bags into the carriage
and touched your hand on the platform,
I almost forgot which way the train was going.

I’ve covered this ground, or at least this scene, in a story; ah, to be young and foolish!

Outside the Quaker Garden

Friends House, Euston Street, London; 12 November 1989

Roses have gone to bulbs for Autumn, abandoning
bright fleshy parts to be plucked by October’s
leafy hands.
             Hands that pluck at cheeks
with cold fingertips, that push hard
against chests and backs with no caresses,
fondle without love or even lust,
fondle just for fondling.
                          Summer’s
last spinning is winding down
to Winter’s slow spiral. December
wound tight and tense and clicking
out turns with painful snaps.
As the turning changes the center shifts,
lurching its stars out of orbit
and tracing cold new figures on the sky.
Roses used to other patterns are placeless.

In the space where two plates rub up
upon each other, filling gaps or emptying,
the changing shadows break the light
into fiery letters.
                   That’s why I’ve come–
to read, to run my finger along the printing
and have my hands turn black
with secret newsprint.
                       Perhaps I’ll have visions
traced upon the garden wall, see cherubim
in the sun’s halo and hear pipes
among Lazarus roses.
                     But there are only
gray clouds in the sun’s halo, and the noise
is just the broken rhythm of October’s hands
tapping the gate against its latch.

This green square cut from Spring’s last scraps
is no greener than any other, and the sun
shines no brighter here.
                         Even Quaker hands
can’t coax life out of the last bits of rose flesh,
or tear larger holes in the clouds for the dripping
sunlight to start pouring cataracts.
No angel hosts, no Gabriel’s trumpet,
no finger pushing me down to my knees
struck in the fields behind my plow.
Only brown leaves, blighted roses,
and a damp and empty bench.
The center spins on, and the garden
has slid out to the spiral arm
to lose its balance with all the rest.

I keep walking against the spin,
looking for the center, listening for the cherubim,
asking for fire from the skies
and voices in the shrubs,
as though that empty bench were not enough.

When I lived in London, I liked to go to Quaker Meeting at Friends House near Euston Station. It was a big meeting, so no one noticed strangers much, and I could settle into the silence in a sunny room and listen for occasional bits of wisdom. I was never moved to speak (this was a traditional unprogrammed meeting, where you wait in silence for a stirring to speak), but I enjoyed hearing those who were.

Outside Friends House is a little garden, and whenever I was in that neighborhood I liked to stop for a few minutes. It’s important that cities have quiet places in them, like the Central Library in St. Paul or Milwaukee Avenue in Minneapolis.

The evening was cloudy with doubt

The evening was cloudy with doubt,
pouring cold water on candles
and blowing them out
with cruel gusts. Oxford Street
soaked the rain in like a sponge
and grabbed like a troll at feet
with its brightly-lit claws,
and on grabbing held tight
to fix ankles and soles to the walk.
Gray doubt spread, wet and cold,
fanning out like oil in the rain,
covered shoes, turned the brightness old
and yellow in its sad brittle grime,
and ran like molasses into the Tube
to settle on the tracks. The climb
out was hampered by a shaking off
of the doubt clinging to my laces.

Written in London, probably in October 1989 based on its location in the notebook. The rhyme scheme marks in the margin tell me I was probably trying for a sonnet. I think I was re-reading “Prufrock” a bit much that autumn.

Dido or Penelope?

On what shore did we meet?
Was it a Carthaginian beach I stood on
that Brighton afternoon, early winter fogs
obscuring lands south, the Pavilion cold
with December winds, while I thought
of the folly of setting sail so late?
Or an Ithakan city I left that morning
in icy rain, carried under its streets
on some chariot bound for Hades
to see a hero’s cosmic vision, a vision
to lead me back to familiar shores?

What shape is my epic?
Perhaps you were but a pause in my line,
a trial I met and overcame for the sake
of some greater Rome;
or my point of launching and return,
the arc of my circle, alpha and omega,
my great Rome indeed.

(At times I feel that a different dichotomy,
a question of Circe or Calypso,
troubles me; a musing over an island witch
transforming me, captivating me,
holding me on her stone amid white waves.

But I am not certain of my Odyssean identity …)
I am afloat and rudderless on the wine-dark sea,
that epic man without a quest, unsure of returning
or building his home, waiting for your signal,
for your pyre to be the lighthouse in my fog.

More classical allusions!

The Victorians in Highgate

for General Otway

Let us hope for good plots of sod for slumbering,
nestled in among green trees and vines
and watched over by hawk-eyed angels;
hope for a bit of morning sun, a piece
of the sunset, a peace of the heart.
Let us hope for good company, too,
souls well-versed in the art
of conversation, good bedfellows
who’ll keep their ashes to themselves
as we perch on our stones, feet dangling,
to talk until dawn and then back to our shelves
to wait for flowers.
                    You must understand –
we shunned the “little death” for hope,
not fear–to save them all for a longer night
lying in among the grasses, to grope
in mind (if not in flesh) between the marbles,
to shed our mantles and run naked
among obelisks and pyramids.
No, we don’t envy the living and their sordid
breathing. See? It is they who are jealous,
tipping cups in our sepulchers at night.

When I was at Queen Mary College-University of London, I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Highgate Cemetery to see Karl Marx’s grave. With its concrete slabs, monstrous bust, and vases of red flowers, it was a brutal sight, more in line with Stalin’s Soviet Union than the disreputable crank who spent his days at the British Library reading room and his nights at the Red Lion. I was an anarcho-syndicalist Trotskyite at the time, so I was greatly disappointed.

But across the path from the new section of the cemetery where Marx lies was the old cemetery, which had been allowed to fall into the most wonderfully Romantic decay. Vines covered the ornate Victorian statuary, trees stretched over the twisting paths and reached down with shadowy limbs, and the whole place seemed to sigh and swoon a musty memento mori. And since I’m far more a Romantic than a Trotskyite, I fell in love immediately.

This poem is my little jab at the Victorian obsession with death and apparent fear of sex, imagined through the filter of Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place. The obelisks and pyramids are common funerary statues, as are the hawk-eyed angels; the cast-off mantles refer to another common monument, an empty chair with a robe cast carelessly over one arm, symbolic of casting off the earthly form.

The last lines, and the dedication to General (Loftus William) Otway, is a reference to a story my guide at Highgate told. He was a charming and garrelous Australian, so this probably falls into the category of “not true, but deserves to be.”

The story was that after Otway was interred in 1854, his family would frequently come to London to pay their respects. Since they lived far away (I think he said Surrey), they would have their supper in Otway’s tomb before heading home. A young Irishman strolling in the cemetery one evening passed Otway’s tomb, and heard the clinking of glasses and laughing conversation, and hurried home to write Dracula.

It’s true that Highgate Cemetery is associated with Dracula, though there’s some debate as to whether Lucy was buried there or at Hendon; and Stoker knew this neighborhood, and probably wandered through Highgate (cemeteries were designed as healthful parks to replace the miasmic old bone yards); and I suppose General Otway’s tomb would be a nice enough place for a picnic. So I’ll stand by the story so long as nothing much is at stake. (“Stake”–get it? Vampires, tombs, stake through the … never mind.)

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