First couple days....

My notes from first couple days...Not as interesting as last year, I'm afraid...

1: Tres tired. Snuck guitar onto carryon plane, which is good. Didn’t have an alternative plan – it was have been broken by regular check. Sitting next to MIT econometrics Ph. d. student. Does quite interesting work, and seems like a nice guy. Is also a touch fucked up by having to take a half-dozen drugs for flight travel (forgetting conversation, telling messy details about family life, etc.). Apparently Bates (my thesis advisor) has very good placement rates for getting students into grad. programs, which is nice option…

2: On landing, Polish passport already comes in handy: The line for passport check was incredible – I have never seen it remotely that long, packed way outside the massive passport check room itself. I, of course, got to zip around the crowd through the British/EU line, which took about two seconds.

Not that it has done me any good, since I’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes waiting for my damn baggage to come through….

3: Made it to Earls Court, successfully met up with apartment owner. Seems like a reasonably nice, intelligent guy -- not the creepy pedophile I had half-seriously feared. That was a minor relief. The sublet itself is in a great location, with a private garden in one of the nicest areas of london. Central etc. The room itself is only marginally larger than the bed in it, but has a private bathroom.

The city is overrun with polish people. It's incredible. I heard polish on the streets at least a dozen times, and I didn't even spend that much time walking around. Three different service workers I interacted with (e.g. bank teller) were polish. Increable, sad and great at the same time.

I'm now at the end of a day that has been almost entirely taken up by phone and internet related matters. Busy worknig out how to get internet access, how to call in, how to call out etc. Made some progress, should set final contact info tomorrow...

instead of writing paper

[this was written a few days ago, but accidentaly left as draft and not posted] I've been busy reading poetry. Tennyson (bits and bobs from In Memorium):

...
Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown’d,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,
...
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?

‘The stars,’ she whispers, ‘blindly run;
A web is wov’n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
...
One writes, that ‘Other friends remain,’
That ‘Loss is common to the race’–
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

unreal city

I'm supposed to be writing this Bates paper, but all I can think of is London calling to the faraway towns...

summer journal will be here. Hopefully I'll get some friends to write too. But for now, time to write a paper that is over 10 days late...