Flaneur Dispatch 3--- Reasons to be Cheerful

I'm too busy to update my damn blog, though not too busy to take a turn round Battersea Park on my ride home every day. The new leaves are the greenest of delicate greens; the cyclists whiz past me in a flash of expensive kit; the coots are nesting and relatively civil for once.

At Hampton Court-- but I saw a nest in Battersea, too.

I'm thoroughly absorbed with school work, more or less all day every day and it's really enjoyable. It's not like the absolutely crushing course load at Pratt last year, since there is only one project at a time. I find it much more manageable- fixating on multiple problems runs my battery down really fast. They don't have classes as such, just a brief and then frequent tutoring sessions for the duration of the project. While that might not work so well for learning something new, it's wonderful to practice and expand on tools already in the toolbox. My brain feels like it is filling my head out completely rather than just rattling around in there.

I don't want to show what I'm working on just yet so here's a rude lion.

Despite the long school hours I have been making a point to get out and see amazing things. Everyone says the glamour of England is going to wear off eventually, but if anything it keeps getting thicker. Everything glows and shimmers with age and layers of history and I love that so much. Last weekend I went to Bath and, even in crowded touristy museum I could imagine the noisy, probably rather squalid place it was almost 2000 years ago. 

Though the reenactors didn't help the illusion any

Then we went to Stonehenge and while the stones were lovely and impressive, what really got me was the way the fields stretched on straight up to the sky. I expect to see trees or buildings in the distance, and to have only the unadorned green land was a strange feeling. I suppose I am used to walking through landscapes, and here it is a sense of walking over them. The canola flowers are in bloom, and their intensity against the green grass and blue sky was almost unbearably beautiful. 

Like that, but more intense

We walked across the fields, and sometimes I ran for a bit because it was windy and wildly beautiful, and I kept nearly stepping in mole holes and apologizing to the moles. I can see why whoever built Stonehenge chose this place; I felt a sense of holiness that was more like Japanese shrines than English cathedrals. 

Obligatory Stonehenge picture. It's roped off in such a way as to make great pictures without people in them; in reality it was surrounded by selfie sticks and polyglot chatter. 

Then we went to Avebury (when you rent a car you have to take FULL advantage of it) and that was my favorite. The henge may not be quite as magnificent, but there are no crowds or barriers, just the magpies the soft crush of your boots in the grass and the big, long shadowed stones. I wanted to stay longer, jumping the stiles and striding over the hills till I saw a White Hind or a Seely Court or something, so it's probably a good thing I didn't. One advantage to the long, rolling hills is that you really don't know if you are surrounded by towns until you get to the top of one. It's easy to feel unstuck in time. 

There is totally a saxon encampment over that ridge. 

I think I had better make an effort to see things outside exquisite landscapes and exquisite museums and exquisite ruins. As it stands, I'm getting the equivalent experience to studying in New York and never leaving Manhattan (or venturing above 110th St) except for the odd venture into the curated part of Williamsburg. I was going to go to Brixton today, but it's all rainy and dreary so I'm going to go to the Tate and see the Hogarth show instead (even I am aware of the irony there). I don't want to take home a vague, pastel dream of England like I did of Japan. I want to know everything about everything, which, while easier on the surface due to a common-ish language, may be just as quixotic a desire. 

NYC hasn't anything like this, above or below 110th

I have been, finally and reluctantly, thinking about my thesis. It's hard to decide what to focus on. I know what I would love to do (cool urban transport solutions) and I know what I am good at (pretty, not too practical things with curves). I'm trying not to be anxious yet, and just to absorb as much as I can for future use. It's hard to be anxious here, really. Everything is so interesting. 

One! Two Three!

Ok, it's off to the Tate. I am gonna swoon at the Pre-Raphaelites and alarm the passerby. 

-Isis