(10:45 pm GMT) i am tired, dehydrated, and sick of being a tourist. i am weary of being shoved around on buses and trains with sixty other people, getting herded into groups around a tour guide who points at things and yells facts. i am finished with going off in large groups, taking hours to decide what twelve people can agree on to do. i don’t want to stand in the rain under my broken umbrella, waiting for someone to come out of the bathroom, waiting for someone to buy postcards and mugs and five t-shirts for a pound.
i want to feel like i live here. i want to walk and listen and look and think for myself. i want you to email me (not you).
look, kids. big ben. parliament.
(10:31 pm GMT) today, london. tomorrow, edinburgh. the next day after that, the world.
really doesn’t have a ring at all, does it?
(4:32 pm GMT) outside the london eye, holly and diane and i waited for matt and jessica. we sat by the road, at the end of the interminable london eye queue, on stone stumps which resembled benches. several ice-cream vendor vans were parked at the curb near us. a young guy in a yellow ice-cream van was eating a popsicle. staring at us. grinning. eating a popsicle, eating it the way they give blow jobs in porn flicks. three girls together, we covered our mouths, giggled, tried not to look, looked anyway, got free ice cream.
oh. tacked to the door across the hall from mine is a newspaper clipping. a waist-up photograph of a naked woman, tongue out, fingers over nipples. the caption reads, “Lizzy got dune me in night of.” i’ve become obsessed. do you understand?
(5:41 pm GMT) did i mention i haven’t time for anything? yes, i think i did. mondays and wednesdays i have class for seven hours, tuesdays and thursdays are day trips with class, and weekends are, i’m told, to be used for extended trips out of town, trips i can ill afford. i’m not so sure i want to afford them anyway, as i’m rather enjoying feeling less like a tourist and more like i live here. grocery store walking bus dorm desk bed
a month is an interesting length of time to spend somewhere; it’s not so short that one has to prioritize what one wants to see and do and choose accordingly, nor is it long enough that much relaxation is possible. what i miss more than anything are those times spent, over coffee or a beer, in really good conversation with just one or two people. here in this strange place, someones always want to do somethings tangible, somethings that involve looking and moving and spending and indiscriminately observing with as many people as humanly possible. as a result, while i’m familiar with this teeming herd, i don’t really know anyone.
time moves quickly and s l o w l y.
(7:00 pm GMT) there are so many girls in my study abroad program. girls and girls and girls and girls as far as the ear can hear, and about five guys. i’ve discovered that when among groups of guys (as i usually am) i feel like a girl, but when among groups of girls (as i am now), i feel like a guy. i’ m not doing any of the shrieking or giggling or boyfriendmoaning. i don’t exclaim, “god, i’m so stupid!” when i make a mistake. never in my life had i heard a girl say that until this trip, and here so many of them say it. it’s one of the saddest things i’ve ever heard.
does this make me androgynous in spirit?
it’s as though i’m in a time warp. i haven’t time to think about home or my friends or my apartment. there isn’t time to miss anyone, and there isn’t time to evaluate this particular temporary existence in which i am absorbed. i’m caught in between two emotional worlds, and as a result, i don’t feel anything at all.
(2:32 pm GMT) i am okay.
last night at o’henry’s, i ate pasta and drank vodka tonics. on my left, they discussed amsterdam in terms of ounces and kilos. on my right, they missed their boyfriends in terms of arizohio. my room is small and comfortable, i rearranged the furniture and unpacked everything in my suitcase. i have spent three days with people all the time, and now i am going around the city by myself, walking the street and riding the tube. tonight i am dying fred’s hair punk rouge.
it is very orange here.
