some things: late october

Contrary to what my last post--and the comments that certain family members made on it--might lead one to believe, I am not in the habit of calling people blockheads. 

Now that I have cleared that up, I would like to say some other things:

The last few days I’ve been severely stressed about the paper that I’m currently taking a break from writing. I’m in a class called SHAKESPEARE: ADAPTATIONS ON STAGE AND SCREEN which, unsurprisingly, studies Shakespeare and certain adaptations of some of his major works: Richard III, Henry V, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and King Lear. I’ve read all of these plays in other contexts: Richard III and Twelfth Night in seventh and eighth grade for optional book reports, Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade--I actually had a good portion of this memorized at a certain point and still find myself referencing parting is such sweet sorrow on occasion--Macbeth in tenth grade, King Lear twelfth, The Tempest first year at UCI for E28B, and Henry V after watching Laurence Olivier’s version of it in seventh grade and being highly disturbed by the “wooing of Catherine” in scene V.

Usually prior knowledge is somewhat comforting, but as I was twelve when I read three of these plays and most--if not all--of the nuance in plot and structure was lost on me then. Similarly, the class asks us to consider adaptation, which requires a sound understanding of the elements of the original and a careful consideration of the changes made and the effects these changes have on the original, as well as the contemporary audiences.

I’m writing on two adaptations of Henry V currently: Olivier’s famous 1944 version up against Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 adaptation. I’m finding this really interesting research, but I haven’t written on film before and it’s wildly different to writing about literature; it’s art and literature merged, in a way, as well as music and fashion. It’s immensely interesting, and I’ve always enjoyed analyzing anything, everything, but it’s also really intimidating not to know what I’m doing. In the UK, at least, at UEA, I’m finding the structure of the classes confusing: there’s a massive amount of reading and very little class time. For example, we go through a play a week in this class, as well as the adaptations, plus any extra research we choose to do on the side. We have about two hours of class to discuss both a play and a film.

I had the brilliant idea on Saturday after I’d rolled around on the floor in angst about this paper. I’d take the class for P/NP credit! It isn’t a part of my major, I won’t get any school requirement credit nor university credit for it, since I’ve already fulfilled all humanities requirements, and I’m allowed to take up to 1/3 of my classes for P/NP. I got the grade change done yesterday and was extremely relieved for about two hours, and then I remembered that I still have to write the paper and I still have to do reasonably well. Of course, I want to get a really excellent grade, but I’m afraid that even with all my research--I’ve been researching for a week, compiling sources and reading books on how to analyze film--the other students have the upper hand because most of them are drama students and have written on this media before.

I wrote my research paper for Hum Core on the strategies used in Cold War propaganda to elicit sympathy for one side over the other to the strategies employed by Dial M for Murder to elicit sympathy for a known murderer. I scored reasonably well on it--very well, actually--but I’m unsure of how much of that comes down to luck and to the movie itself. I’ve been looking back at that paper for analysis I did and that’s made me feel slightly better. Anyway, it’s due at 3 PM tomorrow and I’ve only gotten about half of it written. I’m having trouble organizing all the things I want to say within 1500 words. Here we’re severely penalized for going over 10% over the word limit. I always go over limits. At home we use page limits instead of word counts, but here you have to provide a word count at the end of your paper. 

SHLFKAHLDKJFAHLSKJWAIEURIAUFKASDLKAJFHSDLKFIWYERIWE

In other news, it’s gotten really cold in Norwich. People talked to me about Norwich before I came here and told me 1) it’s hick-town, 2) it doesn’t get as cold here, and 3) it doesn’t rain here.

I can’t judge an English hick when I see one, and I’m unsure I’ve seen one. Here I’m having a hard time distinguishing what’s crude slang and what are actual terms for types of people, so I’ll refrain from describing the types of people I’ve encountered in British terms. 

I went to high school in San Clemente, CA, which is home of the “bro” and home of the athlete, and sometimes both in one. I think surfers fall into a different category altogether. Most people are blond. A lot are tall and somehow everyone is beautiful. I felt extremely out of place amongst my peerage there, but found a place with the “nerds.” There was a huge division between white students and the Hispanic population in SC, and I think everyone was aware of their standing and did little to move outside of it. A lot of that is just how high school operates. I was okay with IB and softball/golf in the same way other people were okay with being prom queen or whatever. I don’t really understand what that’s like.

There aren’t really cliques of social status at UCI--I think because it’s so ethnically diverse there people sometimes cluster with others similar to them in that respect, but mostly I think frats/sororities and academic subjects or other clubs formulate groups. It feels like people just being themselves all kind of get along, or don’t, with other people just being themselves. 

Here--I don’t know, I live with freshers and it feels like the school is divided into freshers v. the world. They run in packs, they’re loud and excited about everything, they like to take shots of gin and they party every Thursday night. The third-years and post-grads are the ones having a beer quietly and earnestly with others of their kind at the campus bar at 11:00 AM, their laptops open and abandoned on nearby tables. I don’t know what second-years do. I think they’re like freshers about to graduate into some realm of upper maturity. They know a lot in classes and question outsiders. In class I’ve often felt I’ve had to earn a place amongst their ranks by saying something smart or somewhat insightful. I think in two classes out of three, I may have succeeded. People look at me now more when I speak--though they’re probably trying to hear what I’m saying. In addition to having an “accent,” I also have an extremely difficult time raising my voice--it sometimes hurts my throat to speak loudly or I feel like I’m shouting, so there’s that going for me. I suppose what I’m saying is the second-years feel like they’re all part of a club that you want to join but aren’t sure how and are never sure you’re in once you’re in it, unless you’re one of them already.

Off campus, in the city--in the real world, I guess--the social divides are more apparent. Something that struck me immediately about the UK is that there are a lot of young parents. You’ll see someone who you think is probably around your age pushing a baby in a buggy (stroller) with a husband or a boyfriend in tow. I watch them struggle with their baby bags or do so gracefully. Either sight is completely boggling. 

People here are also really well-dressed on the whole. In southern California--where I’m from--it’s not unusual to see people in sweats or swim trunks or pullovers and sandals year-round, looking generally scruffy--but there’s little of that here. I think that might partly be in my conception of style: what people have to wear here (jackets, boots, trousers) because of the weather is something I associate with making an effort at home because the weather’s so mild there. I’d read some testimonies from other UCEAP study-abroad participants from UK programs who’d said that the British had a very “interesting” style. I suppose if you’re from California anyone who puts on more than a couple layers at a time looks automatically fancy; but I really identify with the way people present themselves here, besides the fact that women dress very--femininely, I guess. It’s mostly dresses, tights, flats and a jumper with a lot of jewelry. I really like it, but I’d expected a bit more androgyny, I guess. I think I think of most places outside of America as more androgynous. Maybe it’s mainland Europe, or maybe it’s just not Norwich.

I’m not sure where I was going with that. I think I mean mostly that I identify social groups by their type of dress. There’s the typical English student with a quilted jacket, ankle-boots, tights, hair pulled-back or down in waves, and jumper, always with a collared shirt layered underneath; and the boys tend to be well-dressed, too, but I think I’ve mostly noticed their haircuts. I’d describe them here but I feel that I sound a bit too enthusiastic about them. I just very much appreciate the way boys style their hair here.

There’s a group of kids really prevalent in town around the waterfront where all the clubs are who’re unique to England, as far as I can tell, who’re brash in manner, often wear designer or rip-off designer jeans, roll up their t-shirts to show off their biceps, and gel their hair back or shave it all off. There’s a term I’d rather not use for them that I’ve heard often here. I think--they may be the reason that Norwich is identified as a “hick-town.” Other than this and all the young couples, and the few women I’ve seen wearing only leggings and camisoles with ugg boots, it seems a normal place. 

The idea that it doesn’t get as cold in Norwich as in other places might be true enough, but I’ve been comparing the weather forecasts to that of London and some nearby places and it’s either colder here or the same temperatures. I don’t know about up north, but that shouldn’t count, because it’s obviously going to get colder the farther north you go. We are by the ocean in Norwich, but not close enough to benefit from the kind of climate I usually associate with a beach town like...San Clemente. 

And that it doesn’t rain as much? It’s rained at least once every week since I’ve been here and some weeks it’s rained or drizzled every day. I don’t mind the rain, usually, but it gets a bit annoying every day: it’s hard to know how many layers to put on and if there’s wind using your umbrella becomes a struggle. You really just have to pull up a hood and hunch into the cold. It’s worse in the classrooms, though, because outside is all grey and wet and you can’t really see any of it because the windows have fogged up and if you’re like me you’re sitting at your place staring very determinedly into the desk or the book in front of you so as not to gag at the thought of what’s doing that to the glass.

For as much complaining as I’ve just done, I’ve learned to, lately, look at this experience as something new, different, and distinctly English. I didn’t come across the country and oceans that I did to be comfortable and familiar: I came to drink more tea than ever before, to bundle up in 4 degree cold, to walk in countryside, through forests, to ride a double-decker bus in London, to see the hills and castles of Scotland, to drink Irish beer, and to have the freedom to incorporate this experience into the person I am, will be, when I go back home. I came to take creative writing courses from one of the top-tier British creative writing programs. I came to learn about myself without the pressure of wanting answers. At every moment that I’m here I feel myself at the forefront of my life, forging new paths. Every future is available to me. I sometimes catch myself determined to remember a moment as mundane as pushing down the knob on my electric kettle to make my fourth cup of tea, walking through a quiet library and running away from a corner where a couple has comfortably installed themselves, shaking up a can of hairspray to plaster my bun into shape in front of a half-length mirror on the third floor of this building, across from an art museum where a Picasso sketch hangs simply on a grey wall.

freedom package

I've had a bum week. For the last two mornings the cleaning lady has opened my door to a half-sleeping, certainly drooling specter of a person swaddled in a duvet and more blankets than the weather calls for. Upon emptying my bin she's regarded with a professionally blank face a half-empty tub of Phish food, a clean, cylindrical McVities chocolate digestives wrapper torn savagely in two, several Cadbury wrappers, a disposable plate stuck all over with the vestiges of basmati rice and soy sauce. Even halfway across the globe, my friends and I are managing to PMS at the same time, but the possibilities of sweets and chocolates to soothe hormonal aches and mild fevers in England are largely expanded from the already sizable array at home. Here Cadbury bars boast the £1 sign proudly and in yellow, so that when you compare that price to your Egg Mayonnaise and Cress sandwich at £1.89, it only seems logical to pick up one--for today, and another--for tonight.

Here are instructions on being me on a bum week: 

1. wake up each day at noon or later
2. sit in bed listening to audio books for five hours
3. eat a lot of chocolate and cookies while you're doing it
4. repeat

I'm starting to write in the voice of the man who narrates Bryson's audio books, which has leant my writing nothing but the experience of listening to that voice, American, probably New England-ish, slightly raspy, full of alluring, comedic charm and precision of pronunciation. But I'm not just writing to tell you that I've been slave to hormonal flux for a week now, nor that the weather's been gloomy so I've felt justified in staying inside most days except for a brief jaunt across the lawn and back to see some sun and get some circulation. I'm not just telling you that I'm now narrating my own writing in the voice of Ron McClarty as heard in Notes from a Small Island, although I think that's rather an accomplishment and an interesting bit of information.

I'm really writing because today, waking up near to noon, I realized that something I'd been recently informed--nay, two things!--were simply contrary to reason. This week I have been daunted by the task of figuring out the least painful way in which to part with the large sum of cash that makes up my accommodation fees. Yesterday, I recorded a half-hour slot of time in my never-used, often-useful pocket calendar as time in which I was to go visit the accommodation office about which methods to use to transfer my American dollars to their British institution. Before setting out into the mild rain and mist, I'd done my research online and was only seeking to confirm this information, plus ask about fees for bank-to-bank transfers, in person. Well, I made it to the accommodation office, which was bustling with students, was well-lit, and uncomfortably warm. I peeled off my jacket and waited to be seen.

“My questions,” I said, once a small woman had called me over to her desk, “are few and easy. My burden is light and my yoke shall give rest to the weary--”

I didn't really say this. I did explain that I'd done research online and just wanted to ask a couple, hopefully simple questions. She nodded as though she understood and was going to give me correct information. I asked her: “is it true that I can just transfer money from my bank account to the school's bank account to pay for my accommodation?”

This was a trick question. The answer is yes and it says so clearly online. But I could tell by the way this woman was watching me that I wasn't going to receive the confirmation that I wanted, or it wasn't going to be easy.

“Is your bank account--international?” she asked, being polite, on the slim chance that I am actually Canadian. 

“Yes, it's American,” I told her.

“Well, as far as bank transfers, we can only transfer from UK banks to ours. This service doesn't charge fees. However...” And she trailed off, explaining something about international debit cards and how you can use those and they don't charge fees either. After the extreme disappointment upon learning that all the information online is actually not directed to international students at all, the debit card seemed a grand idea. 

“I have an international debit card,” I said, and showed it to her. I'm unsure of whether or not she thought I wanted congratulations. “I'll use that, but I'll have to transfer funds onto it...” and I trailed off, too, thanking her warmly and walking out into the slight rain and cold, back to my room, back to my pyjamas and digestives.

It wasn't until this morning when I woke up that it occurred to me that this information was probably incorrect. Why would they link me, an international student, to a page with defunct information? I needed to ask someone else. So I did some other research online and found that the accommodation office isn't even in charge of collecting accommodation fees. I really should have gone to the office of "Finance Enquiry" at the Registry. I felt very stupid and very pleased at the same time--stupid for not having found out this information sooner and pleased that a U.S. to UK bank transfer was more than likely to be a concrete possibility. (Which should not be confused with discrete probability.)

My main problem now was that today's weather on my weather forecast widget in Dashboard only shows up as a smoke-like smudge across the calendar--wind. At home, I rejoice for rain, enjoy that atmosphere, I am even glad for mild coastal breeze and sunshine with scattering of clouds--actually, those are the best days California has to offer--but I have always, unfailingly complained of wind. And here--I am enchanted though mildly annoyed by rain and drizzle, brief spats of pouring rain fail to faze me, and even arctic temperature plunges when the sun falls fail to elicit whinges to the degree that wind at home ever has. And the wind at home is warm. It makes your hair stick to your face and other crevices you scarcely knew were wedged into your neck or behind your ear. All hope for lipstick is lost, one's eyebrows and eyelashes become dangerous thickets, the body builds up unseemly muscle simply attempting to walk in the direction of one's own choosing. Trees fall over. Leaves spawn as though reproduction is going out of style. Car alarms ring in the early morning hours, and every other hour, especially when you're trying to watch TV or sleep or talk to someone. Dogs bark and howl, ducks quack, cows low, coyotes probably stay underground, or cower under copses on brown dusty hills, because I don't have memories of their howls on windy days.

Wind here is different. It isn't warm--instead it's cold and disregards the fact that you've got any layers on at all, cutting to skin and probably to bone. Car alarms don't go off because I don't hear them on university grounds. The reeds around the university broad go nearly horizontal. Lipstick and eyelashes are still unsafe. But most of all, the wind makes it hard to breathe. You develop a certain way of tilting your head so that the peak of your nose receives the worst of it and your nostrils are still able to draw a normal amount of air and your lungs are safe from overinflation. If you drop out of cadence or take an irregularly long or short draw, you're doomed until a reprieve from the icy gales and you can take in your momentary oxygen. If the wind's blowing from behind, make sure you're wearing a thick jacket or coat and don't let boys walk behind you, either. If it's blowing from the front or the sides, you should wear sunglasses so you can open your eyes, shield them from wind or hair. And you might as well give up on your fringe for the day, it's sticking up straight in the air.

I realized, sitting up in bed, that the sounds I had previously mistaken for thunder were actually wind ripping through the tall concrete buildings and, more importantly, through the crack I leave open on my window. And I wanted to get down to it--can I transfer from my U.S. bank account or can't I? But the specter of the wind and the howl of it through the campus were not, what one might call, alluring. 

There were other reasons to get up, though. First, I hadn't checked my pigeonhole for mail in a few days, and second, my dad had told me that my package had been delivered but I still hadn't received an email from the guy who said he emailed people when they got in packages. So I realized that I'd been, again, misinformed! He doesn't email you! What a liar! 

The thought of tea-cozy-crocheting material and a usb mouse in a package from home was enough to get me out of bed, into a shower and a semi-decent state. It would all be mussed by the wind, at any rate. So I pulled on my books caked with the dried mud and grass of the University of Sussex countryside, a shirt and a jumper, and carried a jacket with me over my arm, as the temperature wasn't to be too cold and the sun was out, unobscured by clouds or mist or trees. You can feel the wind! But you cannot see the wind...

I made my way hesitantly and with moderate difficulty to the registrar, where I queue'd for about three minutes and found out that I can transfer from a U.S. bank without a problem, plus, they'll convert it to pounds without me having to do it, in about one minute. I walked out of the Registry with a paper in hand with the bank's information and feeling triumphant. 

My next job would be slightly more confusing, because how was I supposed to convince someone I had a package in and hadn't had an email when he clearly believed very earnestly that he emailed people when their packages came? I walked with determination down to the ground floor and straight up to the “hole in the wall” where this Gary figure sat hunched over some writing in front of a computer monitor. I stood quietly and meekly. He looked up and said, “oh, hi!” when he realized I'd been waiting for a few moments and that his comportment was not up to the English standard of utmost politeness. Not that I cared. 

I began timorously--“I've talked to you before...and I know you said you send out emails when there's supposed to be a package in, but I know there's a package for me--”

“Did you get my email?” he asked, looking hopeful that this would, in fact, be easier than it was to be.

“Well--no, that's the thing, but my parents--well, the tracking on the package said it had arrived, but I didn't get an email from you...”

By now he is clearly processing what I've said very closely since it's entirely contrary to his world view. 

“Well,” he said, and then, his face clearing, “well, what's your name? I can check to see if something came in...”

I told him. “Lily ____.”

After a moment of muttering that there's nothing here for a Lily ____, his finger pauses in its scan of a chart upon a “David _____.” The abbreviation for my enrolled school--AMS--is in the column next to it. I nearly laugh out loud. 

“There's one for--” and he reads off the name. I hesitate--there could be another student enrolled in American Studies with my last name and my dad's first name, and I mention this falteringly, but I think Gary is stunned by the vague possibility that my name is David and I just wasn't telling.

“That's...my dad....” I say after a moment.

We stare at each other for a second, he in utter bewilderment and me with an idea of what's happened that I already thoroughly understand. My dad's name was on the package as the sender, and whoever took down the name of the recipient accidentally put down his name as mine, because we both have the same last name and it's a relatively easy mistake to make if you are a blockhead. 

“Would he have sent you something in his name?” he asks me after a moment of strenuous mental activity.

“Well--um--I don't think so, but it could be that his name was listed as the sender and--”

but he asks if I want him to check anyway since I know there should be a package for me, so I ask him to yes, please, check, and he pulls up one for Lily _____, saying that it “just came in, actually.” I look around on it for a part that says my dad's name and it's there, and I show it to Gary, who still asks if I want him to "pull up" the thing that came for David, convinced that they're two different packages.

“Sure,” I say, and then because he's looking so determinedly I'm almost fooled into thinking there's another package there--for my dad. 

“Well, there's nothing here, so...” and he noncommittally repeats something that sounds an awful lot like what I've already explained to him. “So, will you just sign here for him?” he asks, thrusting the chart gently in my direction, and I take it up, trying not to grin at the thought that he’s still talking as though the package actually did come for a “David” and that there wasn’t just some mistake. I thank him several times and exit as quickly as I can with my rightful boon.

Well, that explains the emails, I think, pattering down the stairs.

My friends Megan and Kelsey and Angela and I all went shopping during the summer on a certain occasion, and found ourselves in a store that stocked several things plastered with the American flag or picturesque eagles who stare out into the poetic middle distance, looking fierce and free. Megan and I tried on denim shorts on which one of the legs was covered with a screen print of the star-spangled banner. At some point in the conversation as to how pale I really was and “if they were just a different shade of blue...” we'd consider really buying them, Megan called them “freedom shorts,” and immediately, like some kind of forest fire, the term “freedom ____” for any item with anything loosely American about it caught on. We'd see a shirt with our flag on it--”freedom shirt!”--and once I saw a tie in the pattern of the flag and impulsively shouted “freedom tie!” whilst with my family at some modest venue. I even got my sister to start saying it, as when we'd go to the mall we'd point out “freedom socks,” “freedom backpack,” “freedom hats,” “freedom lipstick,” and everything else. 

So when I got my package today--liberated it, say, from a cruel and lonely fate, forever waiting for a David ____ who lives in California and was never the intended recipient to answer his non-existent email by calling on it--and after I'd carried it the quarter of a mile up and down stairs and over slippery surfaces, plopped it on the bed and shed my jumper as it is unusually hot on the upper floor of this house when the sun's shining on the drapes, and then rolled it onto the floor to open it up and saw the words “UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE” underneath the declarations of “royal mail” and other British things, the phrase floated up into my conscious mind without effort: “freedom package.”

And its contents have liberated me from many things: the dense, bored afternoons which shall now be filled with crocheting tea-cozies; the lack of good peanut butter with a can of good, American Jif; the consequential lack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with two packages of these; the iron reign of Colman's mustard with a bottle of beautiful, mild, French's Yellow; the blandness of vegetarian dining options with a bottle of McCormick's fake “Bac'n Pieces”; and the terror of my errant trackpad with a hefty usb mouse, complete with the world's smallest scrolling device.

I am already planning to go down to the kitchen to stow away my precious American goods in the larder; I am sprawling regally as I sprint smoothly over the contents of this screen with my usb mouse; and I am looking forward to an afternoon of audiobooks and the double-vision I associate only with the joy of crocheting. Thanks, parents! And Molly, for your letter! Perhaps today I will redeem myself from the veggie-sausage-burning wretch that I became merely last night as I filled the kitchen with the noxious fumes of yellow smoke and scattered bits of carbonized soy proteins.

(Aside.)

Somehow I managed to get my boss to give me several audiobooks of Bill Bryson’s travel writing a bit over a year ago; and then I never listened to them. Here, though, I found myself wrapped in blankets on my bed at 16.00 yesterday wondering what to do with myself, uninterested in writing, reading, drawing, or scrolling through miles of tumblr dash--and remembered these books.

I’ve been listening to Notes from a Small Island. Bryson’s writing is always amusing, and I’m consistently impressed with how clever he is and how irreverent but accurate his portrayals of the locals on his travels, the strangeness of foreign customs, culture, slang. As an outsider here myself--to rip off one of his other titles--feeling slightly tired, very cold, and unmotivated, but as interested as ever in hearing someone else’s perspective on this “green and kindly island,” I loaded all fifteen hours of this audiobook onto my iPhone and proceeded to play disc one.

To those of you reading--you’ll know me, that I’m capable of turning any experience into one worthy of an hour or two of brooding over, and while my time in England has been challenging, beautiful, and has lived up to so many of my expectations, it has also been a scary place, full of mist, unforgiving weather forecasts and young people who dress with intimidating precision and instinctual superiority to Californians. Part of it’s Europe, but part of it’s also that I’m just on another planet and someone’s convinced me that it’s still earth.

To hear Bryson’s--often crude, sometimes plainly indecent--but honest and true observations of England, his humorous explanations of the differences between himself and the people he encountered, the specific and only-ever-British mindset of certain demographics has given me a whole new hope for my time here. The program I’m on with the University of California is called “Immersion” because we’re going to school with British students, marked as British students and expected to “immerse” into British culture. And while I hope to partake in British things, see British sights, perhaps dip a toe into British patriotism, which is more prevalent here, this year especially with the Diamond Jubilee and London 2012, than most youth would have you believe; I think what I’ve realized, listening to Bryson’s writing, is that I am American, I am Californian, and what I’m doing here is visiting and living, briefly, in a culture different to mine, lovelier and worse in certain aspects, depending on who you ask--and you’re all asking me. 

It’s okay to despair when I can’t go out at 23:00 and find any markets open. And I think it’s okay to never understand the appeal of pub quizzes, or night clubs, or comedy acts. Or eyeballs on every imaginable piece of jewelry. It’s okay to feel different and out of my skin. 

More than anything, by listening to Bryson’s writing, I’ve realized that because I’m an outsider I have the chance to see beauty here that a local wouldn’t, couldn’t, or won’t--I have a chance to appreciate a noisy, ice-cold train ride, the crowded bustle and shove of midnight central London, the fact that the streets here have been inhabited since 990 AD, since earlier, that buildings in these cities were built sometimes thousands of years ago. And that when I see netting over stone cherubs or telephone lines jutting out of an ancient brick edifice, I’ll be able to appreciate that the people here are keeping it alive, appreciate what they have, even if without thinking about it--this is just the place they live, the things they see every day, their homes, the city hall, the Royal Pavillion, the Courts of Justice--they’re just buildings, where people have been, but really, the strange mash-up of technologized, contemporary structures with old, historical districts, buildings, cliffs, mountains, castles is something that makes both the new and the old more beautiful. At home, we overhaul. Here, I think, they adapt.

In my Shakespeare class, we’re watching and studying Olivier’s 1944 production of Henry V, produced during the second World War, and I felt completely out of body--this isn’t real--that I’m in a country that was bombed, that I’m amongst a strong, good-willed, culturally-grounded people, who’ve really seen the worst of it, and who’ve come back from it; here, I’m learning much more about the things that Britain has done for the world, for America, the inventions they’ve produced--the gasoline oven was mass-produced and popularized here! on this tiny island!--the industry they created. I think at home we tend to think of ourselves, of Americans, as the inventors and the conveyors of the newer, brighter age, and while, yes, in medicinal research, in technology, perhaps, and in the weird things you see on 4 AM infomercials, we’re brilliant at production, at invention, nothing about the way we live or think would be possible at all if the UK hadn’t done what it did, if its people weren’t as resilient and good. 

It makes the quirks, the certain-mindedness, the strange food, the lack of real mustard forgivable, worth it, even, to consider that British culture is probably what kept the country alive and strong through war. We don’t understand it at home. We’re a giant country, and aside from the island territories, aside from the terrorist bombings, we didn’t have a home front. These people did, and I think because of it, while they have a different perspective--their “glory days” have been gone longer than ours have--they have immense wisdom, legend, and perspective to lend us. To lend me.

Weekend in Brighton, Day 1

My writing tends towards the metaphorical, the comparison-laden nearly inarticulate descriptions of everyday material turned quasi-monster, spiritual-explosive. Sometimes, I promise people who regularly read what I produce that I’ll stop using metaphors, that I’ll get down to the real business, that I’ll be literal. 

I took a class with Megan and Kelsey last winter with Ron Carlson, whose mild detestation of subtlety and unrealistic language completely revolutionized my approach to crafting fiction. I wrote a short story on a writing teacher that--I’ll admit--wasn’t too far removed from my experience in Ron’s class, and though this teacher was clearly impeded in his brilliance by the limits of my own understanding, what he had to say was different to whatever I’d ever had to say previously:

• Let’s not be clever. Let’s get entrenched in the literal, in the visceral movement through time, through rooms, through dirty streets and smoggy air, through train rides and sick days and dogs that pee on the doormat.

I’m not the only one who remembers him so well. Spring quarter, Kelsey made a batch of “Ron Carlson memes” that we proceeded to print out and stick, with thumb-tack, onto the small bulletin board outside of the office of the man himself--running away wildly, madly after, but not before taking pictures to memorialize the occasion. None of us has talked to him since, but Megan and I have a plan for Valentine’s day.

I don’t know, in exact words, why I’ve opened a post about my trip to Brighton in this way, except to say this, something someone else has already said, but to apply it to a different context:

• ‘The modernists offer a model of “secular sacred”: a way of seeing aspects of human experience itself as set apart, venerable, inviolable. If the modernists’ use of words like “sacred,” “reverence,” “sanctity,” “magic,” and “soul” are not quite orthodox, they are nonetheless more than merely metaphorical.’

So said; yes, Pericles Lewis, in Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel. 

You might have noticed this before now, but I’ve named this blog after a line from “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, who also embraced this ideology, if not half a century before the English Modernists began to embody it in their poetry and novels. Yes, “you shall possess the good of the earth and sun” not because the corners of the earth hold opportunity as vast and beautiful as the sun but because you’re a human being and your body, spiritual, good, beautiful in its humanity, is capable of containing these.

And this isn’t news to you if you’ve been put through American primary school, if you’re an English major at an American university or a literature major in any other country of Western civilization, but Whitman’s poetry also conveys his belief in the translatability of this spirituality across, then, the ethnic and racial boundaries society set, the prejudice against homo- and bisexuals, and this about Whitman made him incredibly sympathetic, compassionate, and a sensitive writer; though not lacking brazen, incredible courage. Each writer’s writing is confessional in a way, all writing is semi-autobiographical, and while Whitman wrote about other people he was always writing himself; while he was working against much of society’s rules he was also for something bigger: for things well-known and well-regarded like social equality for African-Americans and women, for freedom of expression for all sexualities; and while much of what’s striking about Whitman is his mastery of natural imagery--grass, eagles, trees, wood, silver, the sun, the earth--he’s writing about people, human capacity, human dignity, grace, failures, iniquities, numinousness, sadness and universality.

What I mean to say, how I mean to introduce this post: the landscape changes, I’ve been to different places and I’ve liked some better than others, but I’ve always been myself, mutable and self-destructive and full of potential. And the people, everywhere, despite the misunderstandings, the impossibility of translating everything about the American mindset to a British one, or the other way around--people are still good, people are still stupid, people are still beautiful and human. 

Metaphors aren’t metaphors for the sake of comparison--they’re doing something bigger, they’re telling a truth that other forms aren’t capable of containing, or dusting off.

* * *

This train ride was going to have three changes. I’d only been to London and back, before, and hadn’t had to make any. I’d exit the first train at London Liverpool, take the tube to London Bridge, hop on another train to Brighton, and then transfer to a train to Falmer, which Angela’d told me was “right on campus.” I couldn’t picture what that’d be like, and I didn’t know anything about where I was going to be when I got off at the last stop except that Megan and Angela would come to retrieve me.

The first train left from Norwich Railway Station at 19:30. I got to the station at 18:30 and sat in the cold, walking around, watching the list of departures and platforms scroll continuously until I saw my train for London Liverpool was at platform 4. After a brief struggle with the ticket barriers, I dragged my dark pink suitcase--full to the brim with blanket and duvet, as I planned to sleep on the floor--over the threshold, walked to the end of the train and boarded after pressing the flashing “ <> open” button on one of the sets of doors. 

I didn’t have a reservation for this train and I felt a surge of adrenaline as I realized this train looked really different to the ones I’d ridden before--there were sections of seats facing each other and others in pairs lined up facing forward on the side of the train. I found a place where two seats faced three at the front of the car and dragged my suitcase to the empty space between seats and sat nervously. As other people entered the car, I heard them asking each other: “This is the 19:30 to London Liverpool...?” and the general consensus was, yes, it is, so I sat back and peeled open my American edition of To the Lighthouse. 

After the train pulled out from the station and I had already resigned myself to the fact that I was on this train whether or not it was the correct one, the rolling screen turned on and the train’s lady voice announced that this was the train for “London Liverpool Street” several times. I had my ticket placed on my lap in my oystercard holder, waiting for a conductor to pass through and make sure I had one, but for the almost-two hours, nobody passed through.

The thing I remember most about the train ride is that it was loud and extremely bumpy; I had a hold on my suitcase the whole time to keep it from falling over; when I underlined in my book, unless we’d come to a smooth patch and I had a moment of reprieve to make a straight line, the pen flew wildly, intersecting words and punctuation. I’m going to remember underlining these things on a train, in England, even when I’m old, I thought to myself several times. I’ve had this experience quite often while I’ve been here: I’m going to remember this, I’ll think, making extra effort to try to remember, as one does when one’s about to fall asleep and has to remember something in the morning upon waking.

London Liverpool is large and white and always crowded. It’s clean, shiny. To get off this train you have to push the button to open the doors, but I didn’t know this, so I stood staring at the flashing “<> open” buttons until someone behind me reached around and pushed one, and the doors open, and I leapt out of the car and ran to the ticket barrier, pulling my suitcase through unceremoniously. 

I’d been through this station a couple times so I walked quickly to the tube and loaded a couple pounds on my oystercard before walking down and up stairs, dragging my suitcase behind me noisily, laboriously, to the platforms to the Northern Line. I knew I needed to take this line to London Bridge but I didn’t know what direction to go; pulling out my small tube map I somehow decided to stand at the Northbound platform line, and I hung around a few minutes pacing on the platform before I saw the map on the wall and realized that it was going in the opposite direction of London Bridge. The train was just arriving at the Southbound platform and I turned around to run to catch it, breathing loudly and unapologetically.

I’ve written extensively about the woes of carrying luggage on the tube, but it can be done correctly. The trick is doing everything opposite to what I did on my first day in England. You don’t take a seat unless nobody’s going to get on the train or not a lot of people are and that’s not really a probability in London ever, so you don’t take a seat. You stand near the door and hold your luggage against the seats with your legs and stand facing the door, with one or both (if you’re me) hands on a provided handrail. You stand no matter how long your journey is and you stay silent and unbothered while people watch you; men in business suits with no luggage, other internationals, and the newspaper-reading older gentlemen in casual-wear who glance up at you when you have to readjust your stance so as not to fall over. I have notoriously bad luck standing on public transportation; I have terrible coordination unless I focus on nothing else. On the tube, somehow, I can focus on standing and still notice everybody watching me, clearly a foreigner with a piece of luggage completely full, the same piece of luggage I used to pack three months’ worth of things when I first arrived, now employed for a long weekend trip.

London Bridge is wheelchair friendly, which means there’s not a gap between the train floor and the floor of the platform, so it was easier to drag my luggage out. When I exited the train I glanced around for the lift, and unable to locate it, I stared at the staircase determinedly for a moment and moved toward it, but a man next to me in a Jellabiya half-covered by a hoodie asked me if I needed help up the stairs. First I said “no, I’m okay,” but then he asked if I was sure and I considered: can I do it? I didn’t know, but I allowed him to take it up the stairs, thanking him more than was necessary, and aware of it, but unable to stop. He handed it back at the top of the stairs with a modest head nod in response to my thanks, and then took it up another staircase for me. I probably thanked him--what?--another two-hundred times? But I really was grateful, even touched. When he left me the second time I tried not to smile into the middle distance but wasn’t quite successful, and wondered if I looked very smug or suspicious.

London Bridge is as big, or perhaps bigger than, London Liverpool Street, but it’s nowhere near as clean and smells of, as the British say, piss. I stood for a few minutes in front of the list of departures and determined I needed platform 6, towards which I had to walk up several ramps and past a lot of people standing around or going the other way. 

This was a different station, one where trains pass through rather than arrive or depart as they do in Norwich or London Liverpool. The trains come on time, or are a few minutes late and well-reported to be so, and remain at the platform for a couple minutes, then pull out. It starts again.

It began to rain. I found a spot on a bench before the platform got very crowded. I was twenty or so minutes early for my train to Brighton at 22:12. I watched three pull in and out before mine came. I watched people run in the rain to catch their trains at the platform across the rails. I noticed these trains were smaller inside and had less seats; I didn’t see luggage racks in them, and I decided then and there that no matter how hard the floor anywhere, ever, I wasn’t taking my duvet with me travelling again.

When the train came I ran up towards the front, where less people were boarding and more seats were available. I was wet with rain, my hair plastered down, and tired, having been out and travelling for almost four hours by now. I pulled my suitcase into a spot where a lady was reading on the other side and tried to stay out of the way. Two drunk men in suits I’d noticed singing on the platform were in this car and I thought about moving, especially when they started singing “What Makes You Beautiful” in atrocious harmony, but I think after a while I was frozen into my seat. I heard something crackle like ice when I moved for the reading lady to exit before Gatwick. The singers got off there; I noticed a window was open on the other side of the car and stared at it hoping it’d close if I was earnest enough.

A man came in and sat on the other side, near the window, and by this point I was marveling at how my feet felt like rocks of ice, and how I nearly couldn’t feel my fingers. He stood up and tried to push the window closed, but it was open resolutely and wouldn’t. I sighed deeply as he sat down, disappointed. I patted my backpack consolingly.

This man left after a couple more stops and his seat was taken up by a man I knew was going to talk to me; I smiled politely as he looked over my luggage and rested my chin on my backpack in my lap for warmth. 

“So’re yeh goin’ome r n atrip?”

I stared at him for a moment. 

“I’m going to visit friends,” I said, forgetting to mention I was just going for the weekend. He’d already inspected my luggage.

“Ah ah ah I see,” he said, staring at me an extra moment. My accent will do that to people. I do make an extra effort to be understood, but we had very different ideas of how things should be pronounced, so I’m not sure there was much hope.

“Where y’comin frem?”

“Well--” I hesitated, because I couldn’t tell if he meant where are you from or where’d you start your journey so I said, after a moment, “I’m going to uni up in Norwich, but I’m from...well, I’m from California.”

“Well,” he said, leaning back slightly and almost laughing, “I ked tellche wern frem aroun’ here!”

I smiled, trying not to be ironic. Trying, really, not to grimace, or smirk, or do anything exceptionally American.

“S’yu go’te uni up’n Norwich, m?”

“Yeah--University of East Anglia,” which I had to repeat because the train was loud and I have a hard time making myself heard. He nodded.

“I been t’Norwich uns, lovly li’l town,” he said, nodding at me with a hint of irony. I cleared my forehead.

“I like it,” I said staunchly. 

“War’ye goin’ to in Brigh’n?” he asked after he said some things which I clearly could not understand. I tried not to look sorry.

“My friends go to the University of Sussex,” I said uncertainly, but he appeared to know exactly where that was.

“Ah, s’yur goin’t transfer to Falmer,” he said, and I nodded, and then he said “alksdjhfl aksjd fhlkajs hdflk jadflskjd lskjhds lkfjhl akghv dh flkasdjh lkajhdsfl k ajshdflkv asjdhflkv ahjsdfkj hasdlk jhflka djfhlzsd” and I smiled neutrally, and then he told me that I should go to the right to get to Falmer and I nodded and took down this direction. When he got up to leave he said “welp this’s me,” and then advised me not to have too much beer. I laughed without hesitation. 

He appeared to reconsider as he stepped off onto the platform.

“Not too much cider,” he amended before the doors closed. I put my face in my hands.

At Brighton, I got off the train and exited the platforms only to realize my train was already there and I needed to get on it to make sure I got a seat for my suitcase, but my ticket didn’t work going back through the barriers so I had to sneak through when the handicap barrier opened up to let people through and I wasn’t doing anything wrong but it still felt strange. I got on the train across from a girl wearing owl headphones with an owl handbag and looked out the window; which isn’t easy at night, but I was intent on ignoring the fact I had so much luggage with me and had just behaved incorrectly at a train station. 

A section of seats ahead of me, there was a boy drunk to the point of tears, saying things like “What’s the point?! I just don’t want to be alive anymore, I can’t do anything, but I love English Literature and that’s all that matters, I just, I just loved the play we did for A-levels I was so, so, so in love with that and NOW I CAN’T DO ANYTHING, it’s okay, it’s okay, you’ve been this drunk before--the only reason I am alive is because I love literature, it’s just the best thing, I just feel really like myself reading, I love to analyze it all and it’s so good and I love it so, so much...” There was a guy with him taking him home, I think, because the boy--whose name, I gathered, was Christian--was so drunk and sick with it, and the boy kept saying that his friend should just go home because this wasn’t a good way to spend a Friday night and he was such a good friend. I watched mildly, startled to see how bloodshot the boy’s eyes were. I buried my face in my backpack when the train started and listened to more about how amazing literature is and how blank is life and how we have to choose what our lives mean and his means nothing without books or poems. 

I felt like, in another life--but I won’t go into it.

Several people got off at the stations between Brighton and Falmer, and when we pulled into that station a well-dressed boy, probably my age, noticed my luggage and asked if I needed help with it, and I felt slightly flustered because nobody at home would have asked and I wasn’t sure how to react and I said, “I’m alright,” because the platform was literally two feet away and he smiled and walked quickly out of the train and out of sight. I wondered for the first time all night what I looked like; I was probably a mess; but I was here and triumphant after all the confusion of strange trains and strange unintelligible conversations with locals. I realized now what the man meant about going right--there were no signs at this part of the platform, so I went right until I saw signs pointing toward “University of Sussex.”

I exited the station and parked myself and my luggage in parking space 7, watching the outline of the well-dressed boy disappear onto campus. I pushed up my hood and pulled the drawstrings until my face was swathed in cheap-hoodie fabric and said “WHY DID I SAY NO” into the clear black night several times. The ground was wet. I looked at my phone to see a text from Megan: “we coming.”

“I’m here!” I texted, and then, “In parking space seven.”

I waited for a few minutes, five, perhaps, walking back and forth between the lines of the space, trying to be warm. That was the coldest train ride ever! I whispered into the air, puffing out my breath like a dragon, waving my arms.

Two guys came up behind me and I pinned my arms to my side, loosening the drawstrings on my hood, standing at attention.

“Where’s the nearest bus stop?” one of them asked me.

“Um,” I said, then looked around like I’d see it and point it out magically. “I don’t actually know, I’m visiting here,” I said and smiled apologetically. 

“Cheers,” one of them said, and I couldn't tell if it was sarcastic, so I waited until they were gone and then pulled my drawstrings tight again, engaging the air above my face in a punch-out. 

After a while of spinning in vague circles, I noticed three outlines of people walking in the complete opposite direction, coming from the sign that said “University of Sussex.” I could tell Megan by her way of walking, and Angela in the lead, and someone I didn’t know with them.

“Megan?” I shouted, and Megan didn’t turn but the other girl did, tall and thin, and said, “she’s over there!”

“Hi!” and I waved largely, pulling up the bar on my luggage and pulling it noisily over the wet asphalt. They saw me and I watched in mild fascination as Angela released a bellow into the night and came running at me. I released one hand from my luggage and caught her in her running hug, though was almost pushed over backwards by her velocity. 

A high-pitched stream of “eeeeee!” pierced the relative quiet 23:45 night sky. 

“I’ve missed you!!!” Angela squealed. 

“I missed you, too,” I said, squinting at Megan over Angela’s shoulder.

“It’s been a whole week,” Megan said, smiling slightly, and when I extricated myself from Angela’s grip Megan introduced me to Kai, their flatmate. 

“She’s American,” Megan said, and I saw Kai almost take her hand out of her jacket pocket to shake mine so I held mine out until she shook it and it felt awkward but I don’t blame myself entirely because I’d been travelling for six hours at this point and I’d just been almost murdered by a running-leap hug. 

“Did you hear me say where the hell is parking space seven?” Megan asked, laughing. I said no, but that explained how they were headed in the complete opposite direction to where I was standing.

We walked into campus, through a tunnel, over paths, by buildings and a huge library. 

“This is the slope,” they said when we got to East Slope.

“Wo--”

“We live on East Slope! What did you think it would be?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling slightly desolate. I hadn’t even known they lived on East Slope. A quarter of the way up, feeling strangely energetic, I said, “you waited until I came here to tell me about this, I see, I get it, okay,” and then several other nonsense things of the same caliber.

“There’s more slope up there,” Kai said, smiling, and I squinted. 

“There’s more slope, of course there is,” I said, panting. I had three layers on and was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm. 

“And then stairs,” Megan said. 

I can’t tell you exactly how, except for with many pauses and very slowly, I made it up the second slope and the stairs. But I did. Megan said something about how the houses were “little piggy houses,” and I saw what she meant, even in the darkness with half-vision, tired from pulling around a duvet in my suitcase full of more clothes than I should have brought. They were small and brick and close to each other; the stairs were narrow and the houses were narrow and when I got inside everything seemed three-quarter sized. At the door, I heard and half-saw Mia--whom they call the “mother” or “mom” of the flat--squashing a mosquito eater with a piece of tupperware. At a dramatic reprieve Megan, Angela, and Kai all parted and I saw inside, where Mia said, “welcome to our flat” ceremoniously and I let Kai take my suitcase down the corridor to her room, where we’d decided I would sleep in her extra bed. 

I remember saying, “this is a nice-sized room!”

And Kai saying, “Yeah, for me,” and I said, “well, even for two people,” because it was bigger than the room I shared at UCI, and then Megan and Angela dragged me down to their room; down a narrow staircase, past a small kitchen, past a small dining room, and down a corridor whose sensor-lights flickered feebly and didn’t turn on until we were into the room already. I forget what we did, but soon we were heading back up the stairs and down the hall to Kai’s room, because I wanted to do something there, I forget what, exactly.

I wasn’t allowed to make it all the way down the hall because a boy had poked his head out and Megan introduced him to me as “Papa Joe” which is more than slightly strange to an outsider, but I tried to be polite.

“He has a cool rug,” she said, pointing to his pile carpet. I was slightly jealous; rugs at UEA are considered a fire hazard, as are most other things someone could want in a room.

“That is cool,” I nodded, and then she pointed at his shirt.

“He has a shirt with a giraffe on it,” she said.

I felt like rolling my eyes and crying at the same time but instead I stared at it for an awkward moment and said, “Also cool.”

I don’t remember what else we said, but Megan pointed out that this was a room they used frequently to congregate. I remember smiling until my face hurt, which probably didn’t look nice, and somehow, I made it to Kai’s room and looked at my face in a mirror she had hanging almost too high for my shortness; wanting to cry at my reflection but refraining with a certain resignation--isn’t that every day? I ask--and then walk down to the kitchen where Megan has a store of Smirnoff Ice and she pours me a glass, bringing the bottle up with her to “Joe’s room,” where “everyone is,” where “people go.”

* * *

On the way to the flat, in the cold, still buzzing alive in the cold, Megan and Kai run me through the names for different ways to fall. 

“Falling up the stairs is a Pooja,” she says, and then Kai adds, “falling down is a Nonie,” and I learn that just falling is an “Angela.”

I told Mom about how I “Pooja’d” and how Angela “Angela’d” at the top of the stairs and the names for these falls between manic gasps for breath over Skype, and what she says before anything is “Your friends are just as clumsy as you are!”

And then, remembering she is a mother: “Don’t break anything.”

* * *

I sit down on Joe’s bed with Megan feeling really claustrophobic and still hot from my walk up the slope with suitcase in tow, and Megan tells me things about her people and points out the keyboard on Joe’s desk to which I reply--predictably-- “cool”--and pours me a second drink and Angela, from the floor, watching me, asks, “Lily, are you a heavyweight or a lightweight?”

People go quiet.

“I--don’t know,” I admit, and then Megan says, “I think she’s a heavyweight, she’s really sober right now,” and I argue, though I don’t know why, “I’ve only had--!” and somehow, we move on to other topics eventually, while I wonder if I should have taken off my shoes, and Megan pours me another drink, one of Kai’s Breezer, and they talk about how it tastes like a cocktail they like. Mia’s on her second cider (which may have been her fourth, I can’t remember) and Kai’s finishing off the Breezer. At this point, I’m really tired, and I’ve had four glasses of various things, and I remember saying--

“No! Not peach!” before Megan and Angela realize they have to go pick up Kelsey in town. Kai decides to go with them, or Megan bullies her into it, but they all have bus passes, so they all leave. I remember, though vaguely, telling Mia and maybe Joe that I had to go check my email, retreating to Kai’s room, casting a glance at my laptop, getting onto the bed and pulling my blanket over me, then getting up to get my laptop, putting it by my face, and laying down.

* * *

I wake up at around 3 AM because I hear Kelsey, Megan, and Angela downstairs. I walk out, hear voices in Joe’s room next door, and walk downstairs, knock on Angela and Megan’s door. 

“You fell asleep!” 

“Yes.”

“Did you hear us come to check on you?” 

“No,” I say, squinting.

“Megan was like, ‘oh, she’s so cute I just want to hug her!’”

"How does a sleeping person look ‘cute’?” I ask skeptically, sitting down. “I was just sleeping--”

And to be quite honest, I don’t remember much else of the night, except for that Kelsey was there and I somehow got my laptop down to the room for Angela to set up with the internet there. It was late when we went to bed--we didn’t decide on a time to get up but we were going to the pier the next day, something I was excited for--having been told before to visit, feeling hopeful, I suppose, and happy. And very, very tired.