I go on one foot
into the company of stones

standing like old people
hard as tradition

high stones
prodigious stones

stones growing out of the ground
thick as wonder

stones at the poor house
having their aches

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 15 June 1668 (Pepys’ notes for an unfinished entry)

If you experience playback issues with the Vimeo link above, try the YouTube playlist version instead.

This 17-video sequence of videos based mostly in London, with one from the outskirts of Swindon, concludes my year-long series of haiku videos, which began with Winter Trees and continued in Pennsylvania Spring and Summer in the UK: 80 videos in all. As with the other three collections, the canonical link is at davebonta.com.

Let me paste in the text, with the first line of each haiku linking to the original post here at Via Negativa where I wrote about where it was shot and what might’ve prompted it. I’ll post some concluding thoughts below.

Autumn Metropolis

peace garden
the nonresistance
of leaves

*

back alleys
it’s not whether but how
we go to seed

*

building site
the four-square mounds
of unearthed earth

*

poetry festival
someone says the lake
isn’t a lake

*

in wild–
flower beds now
only the cosmos

*

200 years
after Keats’ ode
autumn persists

*

churchyard labyrinth
zeroing in
on the X

*

where the dead
are said to sleep
my autumn face

*

skyline
the immensity
of our loss

*

wet sidewalk
beneath the fallen leaves
another sky

*

London after Blake
bearded hipsters open
a pop-up brothel

*

in this human city
an ash tree sings
possessed by starlings

*

hunting mushrooms
I find
a small circus

*

November rain
a mouse forages under
the garden table

*

this slower autumn
from which there’s no return
cold to my bones

*

guard dog
wagging your tail
I’m leaving now

*

moon at the station
imagine belonging
to just one place

*

Today I watched the whole sequence together for the first time, three weeks after finishing the last video and returning to the U.S., and I have to admit I’m kind of pleased with it — which isn’t my usual reaction to things I’ve made. I think I can detect a gradual improvement in both my haiku writing and my video editing over the course of the year, though I think there’s more continuity than not. I still think single-shot videos work best for haiku, freeing the viewer to give these super-brief texts their full (if not undivided) attention. For that reason, out of this sequence I think “poetry festival”, “skyline” and “moon at the station” are the most successful, though with a video like “peace garden”, I wouldn’t not want the extra shots at the beginning, which help establish context and also introduce additional found text. “Guard dog” does this perhaps even better. Other videos where I took advantage of additional text in the shots include “London after Blake”, “hunting mushrooms”, “churchyard labyrinth” (that cross read as an X, as in Xmas). In “back alleys” and “this slower autumn”, graffiti lend a calligraphic touch, and could be seen as tongue-in-cheek allusions to traditional haiga.

The plethora of texts within the environment is one interesting aspect of making videohaiku, or any sort of videopoetry, in urban locations. Then there’s the ability to connect to great artists or writers who may have lived or worked nearby — not generally as easy a thing to do in the backwoods. So for example the Keats and Blake references set in parts of London where they’d actually spent time.

But most of all, what I have enjoyed about walking around towns and cities this year is not knowing what I might discover around the next bend — which is actually very similar to the way I experience forests. The rich cultural and historical diversity compensates to some extent for the radically impoverished biodiversity. “Hunting mushrooms” is my attempt to suggest something of that sleight-of-hand here. Though it could’ve used a better shot focusing on the mushroom-cap shape of that circus tent… which points up one of the pitfalls of working in this ekphrastic manner. The spontaneity of haphazard shooting on a cellphone is a great fit with the modern haiku ethos, but it does mean that you often have to settle for less-than-ideal footage. The shot in “building site” is really rather sub-par, for example, due in part to poor light and in part to constant vibrations of the road surface I was shooting from as huge trucks rumbled past behind me. But it ended up sparking a fairly interesting text, I thought, even if as a haiku it’s perhaps a bit too clever, too lacking in lightness.

Where do I go from here? It’s tempting to go back and re-do some of my videos from last winter and spring, applying new techniques I learned in the course of the project. I thought about putting all the videos into one humongous Vimeo collection and YouTube sequence, but I don’t know that anyone would ever actually watch it. A better idea might be to select the best half or two-thirds of them and roll them into a single film with a run-time of under one hour, presuming I can figure out how to do this with the video editing tools at my disposal, and call it something like Crossing the Pond: A Transatlantic Haiku Year. Then I’d have something I could, I don’t know, put on a DVD? With an accompanying book? I’d appreciate feedback from anyone who’s been following this project. What would you like to see? Or are the four online sequences sufficient?

The silver trencher plate is one of three in existence known to have belonged to Pepys — although it was only recently recognised as such — and is the only one on display in the UK.

It bears Pepys’ coat of arms and was made in a workshop in Foster Lane, near St Paul’s Cathedral and the museum where it now resides, in 1681/2. Cutlery scratch marks are visible in its surface, suggesting it was one of the pieces Pepys was referring to in his diary when he boasted that he served his guests on silver plates rather than pewter.

Well, if it was made in 1681 or 2, it couldn’t have featured in the diary, though there’s no doubt he was very proud of his silver. At any rate, it was such an impressive object I walked right past it and had to ask Rachel where the hell it was. My photo is, um, not good:

I thought this ceramic plate on display nearby captured the spirit of the age much better:

Coolest of all, perhaps, was this copy of astrologer William Lilly’s 1651 book Monarchy or No Monarchy, which was said to predict the Great Fire:

Pepys’ diary accounts of the actual conflagration were extensively drawn upon for the museum’s looped six-minute film. I sometimes wonder whether his diary would be nearly as famous had he not had the (mis)fortune to live through the great plague in 1665 and the fire the next year.

We decided sort of on the spur of the moment to go back to Seething Lane and see whether the gardens on the site of Pepys’ office were accessible. On our previous attempt at a Pepys pilgrimage three years ago, the site had been all torn up and walled off for some sort of construction, and we feared the worse.

Our route took us past the Guildhall, and I couldn’t resist another selfie with the Pepys bust there. This is Sam at the peak of his power and influence — not the young man on the make of the diary period.

As we rounded the corner from Hart Street to Seething Lane, Rachel noticed that St. Olave’s — Pepys’ church — was actually open. We hadn’t gotten into that last time either. So we were finally able to see the sculptor John Bushnell’s bust of Elizabeth Pepys that the grieving Sam had paid for after her early death in 1669, high on the wall to the left of the altar.

A more modern memorial to Sam himself, paid for by public subscription at the instigation of his Victorian-era editor Wheatley — the diary edition I’m erasing — isn’t nearly as impressive:

But the church has plenty of other fascinating details, such as this window from the Clothworkers’ guild, which evidently had teasel as its emblem:

And it was great to see that it was still very much a functioning Anglican church, not merely a tourist attraction. See my album on Flickr for more photos.

The churchyard was also charming, and included an herb garden in tribute to another famous parishioner, William Turner (1510-1568), the father of English botany. There was also a labyrinth, and Rachel didn’t object to my filming her feet as she walked it. Naturally, I had to turn it into another videohaiku:

The site of the Naval Board offices was right across the narrow Seething Lane, and Pepys had arranged for a covered walkway connecting them so the great men could walk to their gallery in church without getting rained on. Such is the enduring interest in Pepys that even the location of that former entrance is memorialized…

…as is, of course, the site of the navy office, which survived the Great Fire only to be destroyed in another fire seven years later.

The reason the Seething Lane gardens had to be destroyed and replaced was to build an underground parking garage for the adjacent building, formerly the headquarters of the Port of London Authority, but now London’s second Four Seasons Hotel,

this one owned and operated by a Chinese corporation…

…which has done a decent job with it. To quote the wonderful London travel blog IanVisits:

The word ‘Seething’ may originate from a medieval word ‘sifethen’ meaning ‘full of chaff’, so-called after a nearby Corn Market.

Seething Lane Gardens have a curious history, but suffice to say it was once the topic of a planning dispute, and, with a slight gap, the fine of one red rose has been paid annually to the Lord Mayor. That’s since 1381, and the Knollys Rose ceremony still takes place each year.

In addition to the roses though, it’s famous for its association with the diarist Samuel Pepys, who lived in the same street and said he buried his exceptionally expensive Parmesan cheeses in his own back garden to protect them from the Great Fire of London.

Imagine our delight to look down and see Pepys’ buried cheese memorialized in a flagstone:

This was just one in a whole series of flagstone engravings relating to Pepys, the Naval Board, the fire and the plague. Check out, for example, this excellent flea:

And here’s a depiction of Pepys’ shorthand original of the diary:

There’s no key to the paving stones anywhere, so if you’re not a Pepys fan, some are likely to be mystifying. This for example clearly depicts the removal of his bladder stone, which diary readers will know was a very big deal to him — he marked the anniversary of the operation every year with a party:

I have photos of most of the engraved slabs on Flickr. As for the garden, Ian nails it:

Although I would have to say the current garden is rather pleasing, it’s of a style that’s increasingly generic – of raised beds with lots of paving, and hence not that interesting.

What does make this one stand out a bit is the paving […]

Sadly, the Knollys Rose has not been immortalized in stone, but some of the plants looked distinctly rose-like, so the ceremony should resume this year.

The garden was designed by the landscape architects, Capita Symonds.

The cost of the landscaping works came in at £1.25 million, paid for by the hotel development.

Walking to the Bank tube station at rush hour, we were impressed by the crowds of business-suited young and middle-aged City men, some scurrying, a few sauntering, many smoking (an unusual sight elsewhere these days). Palimpsest as London may be, some things don’t seem to change very much over the centuries.

Here in the UK, “orientate” is actually an acceptable verb. And it’s one they use often.

The London Underground map is a thing of beauty, but this is not that map.

There are flocks of wild parrots in the parks,

but the true avian symbol of the city is the crane.

Cities are made of walls. In London, these walls rarely stay in one place for long.

London is built on clay and with bricks made from that same clay. No wonder everyone seems so self-absorbed.

Statues stand by to call us on our mobiles

and fountains let us control them with a sweep of the hand.

One art college puts its students on public display

and a natural history museum incorporates its staff into the exhibits.

The spirit of Jeremy Bentham is everywhere,

his panopticon an accepted dimension of British life.

A squirrel can’t gather leaves for its nest without being followed and photographed multiple times.

Someone is always watching,

someone is always plotting their escape.

Dead white men are still lionized

with their mighty compasses

pointing the way to the Age of Enlightenment.

I’m still not sure how to bridge that gap.

Though there’s a short street in London named after him, the actual spot where Samuel Pepys lived and worked on Seething Lane has been converted into a garden—or had been. It’s now part of a massive construction site. The above poster appears on the hoarding.

I believe this is the bust of Pepys that had previously stood in the Seething Lane Garden. It’s now in the tiny churchyard next to St. Olave’s, where Sam and the other members of the Navy board had a pew.

The church was locked up tight when we visited a few days after Christmas, so I have yet to see the fine bust of his wife Elizabeth that Sam had erected in the church after her death, but the churchyard gate was plenty photogenic as well.

The church is squeezed in among office buildings and hotels, but unlike the garden I assume it’s safe from demolition,

guarded as it is by that most sanguinary of saints.

In any case, the church seems proud of its association with Pepys,

as is the Guildhall, another essential stop on any Pepys tour.

There’s currently a major Pepys exhibition on at the National Maritime Museum, focusing on his life and times (and not exclusively his tenure as a naval administrator under Charles II and James II).

Samuel Pepys was one of the most colourful and appealing characters of the 17th century, and witness to the great events that shaped Stuart Britain, brilliantly brought to life in his famous diary. He lived through a time of turmoil which saw kings fighting for their crowns, the devastation of medieval London by plague, fire and war, and its resurrection as a world city.

The exhibition features 200 paintings and objects from museums, galleries and private collections across Britain and beyond.

Unfortunately, photography wasn’t permitted, though I did get a few shots off. Pepys refers often in the diary to the anniversary of the successful removal of his bladder stone—an extremely hazardous operation in the mid-17th century. I love the word “lithotomy” for some reason.

An illustration from the book above. The earthiness of the 17th century in general, and of Pepys’ diary in particular, is one of the things that draws me to it as a writer.

The diary itself was not on display, since Pepys willed it to Cambridge University, his alma mater, on the condition that it never be loaned out. They did however have a copy of the shorthand key he used to keep the diary private. “Tachygraphy” was my other favorite word of the day.

Of course I had to sneak a photo of the 1666 Pepys portrait by John Hayls, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. It’s the only major portrait of him made during the diary period.

Rachel snuck this photo of a diary timeline from the very end of the exhibition. We were both a little shocked that it made no mention of Phil Gyford’s wonderful web version of the diary, though it does mention the Twitter account derived from it.

When we left the exhibition, the moon was already high in the sky.

On Saturday, I was invited to join a sort of huntless hunt in the wilds of darkest England. The local beagle club assembled next to the barn on a big estate belonging to a member of the titled aristocracy who had given permission for us to ramble over hill and dale, following a well-trained pack of beagles who were in turn following a scent trail laid down the day before. This is known as beagling. Since the actual hunting of hares with beagles was banned in 2004, this is the best that the beagle clubs can do. I’ve always been wary of sports with too many rules and I like to walk, so it suited me just fine.

After a rainy morning, the sun had started to make appearances around noon. Fortunately many of the club members are elderly, so early rising isn’t their style. I was told that this was an unusual “hunt” because the pub where they otherwise would’ve met for a drink or two before setting out was closed for renovations.

Perhaps as a consequence, attendance was low—fewer than ten members aside from the huntsman and the whippers-in, whose job it was to attempt to keep the dogs off roads and out of trouble, and to rally them with periodic blasts on a hunting horn.

The low hills and gently rolling fields were unusually green for this time of year due to all the rain, and the streams and ditches were full of run-off, which made cross-country walking especially challenging. With many of the hedges bordering the ditches very nearly impenetrable and gates scattered seemingly at random, it often felt as if we were navigating a very large maze with a continually shifting goal.

Most often, the hounds were dots against a distant hedgerow, and we split up into smaller and smaller groups as club members assessed for themselves which ditches they felt comfortable leaping and in which direction the pack might be headed next.

But from time to time, the pack circled back toward us and we got a chance to watch these resourceful, high-energy animals doing what millennia of human-guided evolution have shaped them for. One hound named Murder seemed to have even more personality than normal for a beagle; the whippers-in were constantly chastising her for doing her own thing.

The estate was dotted with evidence of wealthy eccentricity, including a small astronomical observatory and the newly built dwelling pictured above, which, I was told, had won some sort of major architectural award. It served as a convenient landmark throughout the afternoon,

though the traditional stone architecture seemed like a better fit with the landscape. Some of the tenants brought their kids out to watch the hunt, and it was fun chatting with them and hearing their broad local accents.

The landscape was obviously managed for wildlife to some extent; pheasant shooting is still legal and apparently quite lucrative for landowners who permit it. I saw an invasive Chinese water deer, which was barely larger than a hare, as well as several actual hares which, while obviously alert to the proximity of beagles, did not seem unduly alarmed (and in fact escaped unscathed). In general, as one of the club members put it, beagling is a form of legal trespass—a great way to see parts of the countryside otherwise inaccessible to the public.

It was entertaining to watch the beagles climb fences and dart through hedges at speed. I happened to be at just the right place to see them being rounded up at dusk, though they obviously would’ve hunted all night had they been allowed to. Fortunately, the rain held off until we began the long tramp back the cars.

Back home, we were soon fortified with roasted vegetables and a steak and ale pie.

Isis or Oasis? This ship of fools we’re on has no permanent mooring.

We glide through the city in an integument of advertising, subsumed by consumerism.

The grey winter skies are a burden everyone must bear, but at least they are blank of message.

One remains receptive to that blankness at one’s own risk.

Only in museums do we celebrate what doesn’t fit,

though street art offers a more direct challenge to the lies of the carnival barkers.

Let us acknowledge at least the idea of escape—that there can be some oasis,

that the bourgeois dream of a walled garden dissolves after dark into the dominion of wild foxes.

Every time I stay in London, I pay a visit to Hampstead Heath—which, despite its name, is in fact more like what we Yanks would call a forest with a few large meadows (while many of the historical “forests” around the UK are, I gather, more like heaths).

It’s only a short train ride away from where I’m staying, and it’s home to many grand old trees, some of which look as if they’ve been around since the days of Ethelred the Unready.

The Heath first entered the history books in 986 when Ethelred the Unready granted one of his servants five hides of land at “Hemstede”. This same land is later recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as held by the monastery of St. Peter’s at Westminster Abbey, and by then is known as the “Manor of Hampstead”. Westminster held the land until 1133 when control of part of the manor was released to one Richard de Balta; then during Henry II’s reign the whole of the manor became privately owned by Alexander de Barentyn, the King’s butler. Manorial rights to the land remained in private hands until the 1940s when they lapsed under Sir Spencer Pocklington Maryon Wilson, though the estate itself was passed on to Shane Gough, 5th Viscount Gough.

Over time, plots of land in the manor were sold off for building, particularly in the early 19th century, though the Heath remained mainly common land. The main part of the Heath was acquired for the people by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Parliament Hill was purchased for the public for £300,000 and added to the park in 1888. Golders Hill was added in 1898 and Kenwood House and grounds were added in 1928.

Even the London plane trees lining the walkway in from the train station are venerable.

The above beech was almost completely dead in 2011, so we were lucky to see it still standing. Most trees in the Heath are allowed to stay where they fall, unless they block a path, and it’s fun to see the changes from one visit to the next.

The understorey isn’t as healthy as it could be, due to—I’m guessing—a combination of too much human foot traffic and over-grazing by deer. But a few patches have been fenced off now, presumably to allow for seedling recruitment, and it seems to be working. Which is good, because there’s nothing more tragic than a beautiful old-growth forest with no future.

I’ve visited the Heath in the spring and summer, but this was my first visit in late autumn. It was fun to try and guess British trees by bark alone.

But not knowing for sure is a bit freeing, actually, allowing me to focus on aesthetics. While I was admiring this ivy-draped tree, a European robin popped out of the ivy and cocked his head at me, though sadly he buggered off before I could get a decent photo of him.

A favorite oak from a previous visit.

One hollow beech is so enormous, you could almost live inside—and judging from the polishing, it looks as if large numbers of children have tried.

Not all the cool trees are big in diameter, though multi-stem birches like this can have roots that date back hundreds if not thousands of years and just keep throwing up new stems as the old ones die.

I’m not sure what this round cottage was built for. This was the first we’d seen it, so it’s a good reminder that there’s still a lot of the Heath we have yet to explore.

The dog was thirsty after a couple of hours wandering the Heath, so of course we had to stop at the pub across from the station. It turned out they had Scotch eggs as well—a good way to end the afternoon. (Photo by Rachel.)

It’s been less than three weeks since I returned from Cornwall, but already the alembic of memory is distilling the random incidents of that trip into stories fit for re-telling. One such story I’ve begun to think of as the Mystery of the Dead Hand.

We were staying near the fishing village of Mevagissey on the south coast, a place perhaps a little too in love with its own charm, full of shops selling the worst kind of kitsch to tourists.

The town’s museum was so funky and down-home as to be either wonderful or terrible, depending on one’s perspective.

But our campsite was adjacent to a genuinely great attraction, the Lost Gardens of Heligan — lost because all the gardeners of this grand Victorian estate were killed in World War I, and it fell into ruin for the next seven decades.

When new owners began finally to restore the gardens in the early 90s, a series of mysterious incidents convinced many of the workers that the place was just a bit haunted. Strange shapes appeared and disappeared. As one contributor to a message board put it,

The garden itself is filled with a gentle melancholy and there have been a number of reports of figures around the wishing well. The most sinister occurence relates to an area known as ‘The Lost Valley’ where the gardens go into a wooded ravine towards Mevagissey. Apparently, one of the restorers encountered a monstrous black shape which rose up and dissipated through the trees. Investigation of the area revealed a pentangle pegged out in the ground giving rise to the suspicion the deserted gardens may have been used for Satanic rituals. This incident followed a period when the team restoring the gardens felt a collective oppression culminating in the tragic death of one of the team’s family in a house fire.

As it happened, the Lost Valley was adjacent to a cottage owned by Rachel’s friend F. We had stayed there for the first three nights of our holiday before moving up to the campground to make room for more guests, but we continued to socialize down there throughout our visit, often walking through the gardens to admire the old trees. F told us about one route from the campground we could take, which involved following the bike path to Mevagissey and taking a short-cut down into the Lost Valley through what she called the mossy tunnel.

When we finally got a chance to explore it one morning, F’s description turned out to be not at all fanciful. The ancient public right-of-way may be a short example of what’s known in Britain as a holloway (or hollow way), a road that’s been in use for so many centuries that its surface is now well below the surrounding fields.

The distant booms of World War I artillery — a practice run for a commemorative program at the Gardens two days later, on the 100th anniversary of Britain’s entry into the war — faded as we descended into the hollow, absorbed by the thick moss and the great, gnarled oaks bent low over the trail.

Soon we both had our cameras out and were snapping away. But what little sun there had been earlier had gone away, and with the darkness of the foliage, lacking a tripod as I did, it became difficult to get a clear shot.

Rachel had somewhat better equipment, and a sharper eye besides. Thus it was she who spotting something odd up inside a hollow in one of the big old trees beside the tree. “Dave,” she said, “I think there’s a hand in here!”

I glanced in and saw something pale and fingery hanging down. Just a fungus, I thought. But then she pointed her iPhone at it and pressed the torch (flashlight) app.

“Um, maybe some farmer left his glove in there?” I said. “Gloves don’t have lines and callouses and dirt under the fingernails,” she said.

I had to admit she had a point. I looked up inside. The hand terminated half-way up the arm and was dangling from a cord that had been threaded through the wrist.

“How about if we poke it with something?” I said. It seemed like the best way to prove it was just a very realistic fake. But what if it was real? “I’m not sure we want to be tampering with possible evidence,” Rachel said.

Evidence of what, though? To me, the Tolkienesque location could be no accident. If this were a real human hand, it must be intended as a charm or fetish object, hung here to gather power. I thought of the display on witchcraft at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford which we’d seen earlier in the summer. Rachel’s mind ran more toward psychotic serial killers. Those weren’t mutually exclusive scenarios, of course.

There were two cottages close by, inhabited by an elderly woman and her daughter, but F.’s cottage was only about a hundred yards up the other side of the ravine, so we decided to go there instead. She wasn’t expecting us, and seemed startled when we walked in. We showed her the pictures on our cameras. She’d never seen anything like it either. Even if the hand was fake, it was frightening to think of what sorts of things people might be getting up to so close to her idyllic get-way.

So it was that we came to call the local police about a possible human hand in an old tree adjacent to the Lost Gardens of Heligan. We figured there was only a slim chance that it might be the real thing, but best to play it safe, and when the first policeman arrived a half-hour later, we told him we fervently hoped we were wasting his time. A local resident, he exuded unflappable calm and savvy. While F stayed to wait for the other two cops, Rachel and I took him to the tree.

“Oh yes, that’s fake,” he said confidently almost as soon as he saw it. Nevertheless, he donned rubber gloves before he touched it.

“How did you know?”

“I’ve seen things like this before,” he said as he pulled it down. It squashed in a rubber-like manner. “But very realistic, indeed!” he added charitably.

He radioed the other cops, then began to try to cut the stretchable cord, which had been fastened somewhere far up inside the tree. Then he did a double-take, and pulled off what turned out to be a lid on the upper end.

A small glass canister came out. We leaned in for a closer look: it was empty. What the hell?

“This is a geocache container,” he said. He was indeed a very knowledgeable policeman.

It turned out he’d seen someone doing something suspicious in a Mevagissey phone booth a while back — reaching up behind the phone and acting furtive — and when he questioned the guy, he turned out to be a geocacher and filled him in on the sport, a kind of high-tech scavenger hunt using GPS.

What surprised me was how good-humored all three policemen were when they found out it was just a geocache. Though they were very kind to us, and insisted we’d been right to call them, they were also bemused and tolerant toward whomever had placed the fake hand in the tree. In poor taste though it might have been, “This is a public footpath, isn’t it? Well, then, they’re well within their rights to place it here!”

We were left with the task of explaining to the neighbors why there were policemen coming around. Everyone wanted to look at the hand, of course, but now it had rotated so that the palm wasn’t showing, and having been recently handled, it no longer looked nearly so realistic. When Rachel and F’s teenaged sons came to look a little later, they couldn’t believe we’d been so credulous. “It’s so obvious that it’s a fake,” said A with the know-it-all tone that only a 14-year-old can muster.

“But do you know what people will do for power?” I asked. “Do you know what they’re capable of doing to their enemies?” He gave me an uneasy look. “It’s easy to act confident in the absence of knowledge. How much have you read about the old beliefs?” He began to look alarmed. “The hand of a murdered man was once a very useful thing…”

I’m about to begin the long journey back to central Pennsylvania after three months abroad. This last week since our return from holiday in Cornwall has been full of outings with friends and last-minute visits to things we’d meant to see all summer. But I promise some more photos and travel posts after I get settled in at home. My other home, that is.

I’m wondering what I’ll miss most about London, aside from Rachel and my other friends here, and I think it might be that particular, delicious kind of lostness that comes from immersion in a constant stream of sensory inputs and the whirl of cultures, languages and dialects that one can only get in a major city. I’ll miss good beef, street-corner pubs, old Slavic fisherman on the canal path and Muslim families picnicking in the park. I’ll miss sitting like a king in the top level of a lumbering, double-decker bus and watching the endlessly varied streetscapes scroll past.

And what do I most look forward to at the other end of my journey, aside from family? That’s easy: the lush meadows, the forests, and all the singing insects that I’ve missed listening to here — especially the throbbing choruses of northern true katydids that are such a feature of August nights in Pennsylvania. All the distinct dialects of silence.