its not that sunny of a day

waking up in bed at 2. on the weekends when i have nothing to do and it's not nice outside i sleep 12 hours until my endless dreams are boats trawling through my subconcious, and everything comes to the surface in a jumble. the girl from high school wearing gap is in bombay to cut wheat like she does every year and we're standing on a street corner that i was watching on the werid porn in his room next to the yellow duvet it was raining and hot. elmo from sesame street is on the altar next to a tshirt and my heart is breaking, this is after but not because the man was run over in the yard and threw things from his pockets in different directions. good morning

spasm.

back pain. it's been there for a while, but monday it got annoying, and by tuesday I was downing the gin to ignore it. apparently i pulled a muscle in my lower back a while ago, and it's reaching healing/spasming point. i don't believe this, but i believe them when they say it will go away in a few weeks. a few weeks of no exercise (therefore severly depressed without adrenaline) and of eating every 5 hours to counteract the stomach-lining eating ibuprofen (therefore gaining weight & depressed). who hoo.
it's bank holiday weekend, and my goal is to spend it in hyde park, in the sun, and on my back.
i have to make dessert for sunday's dinner. rasin rum souffle with vanilla cream topping?

please tell me its friday, please

today we went for a walk at lunch, skies blue and sunny, light breeze and sunglasses out.
there's where he used to work, the greasy spoons and london's daily cheap markets.
pub lunch (ie a pint of staropramen and half a sandwich) and a good wander through the barbican.
a step back into a mad 70s dreamworld made reality in central london.
concrete tower blocks, flower covered skywalks and endless red brick.
http://www.barbicanliving.co.uk/my_photos/DSCN2846.jpg
http://www.barbicanliving.co.uk/my_photos/DSCN1642.jpg
then the wind came up, it started pouring, and we took refuge in another pint

it's over...

reception weekend stories and photos demanded by self-exiled austinite who could not attend.

smitten

oh, i truly am. no need to remind myself how much i love bright and crisp sunday april mornings in london. the farmer's markets packed, kids running through stalls of shiny food, the top down sunglasses on porsche carerras in the streets, men playing tennis in holland park at 8, the way my hands are still cold in the wind and the way the flowers never stop blooming, never wilt in imagined heat.

many things i love because of the way they love me, but this city gives nothing. she never changes, but always stands firm against my wild veering and growing character. she makes nothing easy, and most things difficult. she is full of memory, her streets and corners reflect my own history back to me. i would draw a strabo map, a map of words stories sterotypes emotions invisible boundaries memories.

turn right at the second pret a manger, then the big wooden door on the right is where i argued with alex and the pothole further down keeps getting deeper so that now i have to ride my bicycle against traffic. i suspect its the milk truck every morning screeching to a halt there. these blocks lack personality, but when you cross the wide Nash street (church on right, oxford cirus on left) i dont know anyone who lives around there but i've climbed to the rooftop of that building and i used to eat lunch in this park and watch the ladies from debenham's come out to smoke. i said goodbye to kate when she left for China over there, and then jen and i walked home together and life shifted into a new stage. once you get to the biggles sausage you're in my 'area', and home feels only seconds away.

quality of life....

how do you name it?

i live within 10 minutes of 2 of the best urban parks in the world
i have a sun filled room with big windows
i can walk to work in under an hour through gorgeous urbanism
i have a large personal space with plenty of storage
there are at least 30 drinking establishments within one mile of my front door
as a female, i can walk in central london alone at all hours year round
there are 2 large supermarkets, and 3 'metro' stores, a french cheese shop, a gormet butchers, a chcolocate store, 3 cobblers and 2 - count em 2 - fresh seafood shops within one mile
i am within a 40 minute walk of all but one train station in central london
i market among hijabs faceplates and east london slang calling out cheap deals on old cheese and chocolates, and i market among organic farms and ethical butchers from across the UK
my bicycle is welcome outside every establishment in a four mile radius
i have the choice of getting to work in 15, 30, or 50 minutes, irregardless of traffic
i can walk home pissed beyond walking from most any central london area
i can run every red light between work and home without blinking twice
as a female, i do not need to worry about the sex of my competitor at work
i cannot hear traffic from my room, only sirens

thoughts for the evening

no full hyde park circuit this morning, but hey, the plane trees aren't in bloom yet and the round pound is depressing compared to the serpintine's blossoming glories.

someone's making snow - SNOW - at the gallery, i guess it's time for the annual serpintine ball, which kicks off the london season. despite the obscene luxury and slaveness of snow in late april in london, it was fun to watch the giant machines churn out white powder into a late dawn. ice crystals against full green grass. the royal parks are already not cutting the 'high grass' areas where lovers go to picnic and fuck when the grass reaches waist high.

the roman catholic church does pomp and cirumstance better than anyone, including jesse.

i say ma'm on the phone to older ladies; apparently this is reserved for the queen in this country. must fix soon. or, just remain american weird. perhaps the latter gets me further in work.

shall i call you sir. 'no, i am not prince hamlet, nor was meant to be! Am an attendand lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince; no doubt, and an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use, politic, cautious, and meticulous; full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; at times, indeed, almost ridiculous - almost, at times, the Fool.

the guests leave and everyone comes out to play

naptime
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

weekends are not long enough to bring on boredom

dogged by a sense of indolence. i sit here trying to convince myself that i'm a perfectly normal person if i just want to go lay in the sun in the park. i still fight the catholic guilt over idle hands. i need someone to do nothing with though.

drake and karan have gone. perhaps the highlight of the weekend was 6.30 this morning when karan shouted 'i've missed my flight' into a sunlit room and jolted me awake. it was just the dawn reflecting off the landmark's windows, not a true sunny noon. it was uneasy sleeping from then on. for some reason there were 2 day queues at ikea, and my cousin was getting married in a pine lodge.

i know that in london there is an enormous fountain of alcohol that flows secretly to everywhere in the city. a never ending supply, without which the mechanics that keep the city running smoothly would grind to a halt. the buses wouldn't run, the street cleaners wouldn't sweep, and the taxis would all sit idle in vacant streets as the entire city of people machines systems would endure a silent, painful alcohol withdrawal unto death.

i must remember bars close at 11.30 or 1 here; too many nights wandering in the cold for an open drinking venue. friday after work, doing the office's tatoo audit in the local pub over belgian beer. G &T over food in noisy local, you can have all the cola bottles in the starmix, but i get the bears. hakkasan's water bar, with sakitinis and pear collins. dark wood screens chill music and a true mix of londoners.

saturday was the central london tourist's pub crawl through picadilly soho covent garden. then up to st john's wood for an animated drunken night. we had to convince drake he'll have fun at reception weekend in austin soon. say hi to la contessa and melt for me. cromwell staggered back with us, and as the boys dipped in the brandy i consumed 3 sausages and hit stupor.

what i'll be missing

i want to be robert e lee

climate friendly energy?

in response to the front page nomadlife entry on oil reserves I thought i'd stick my two cents in to respond on tom's answer of 'go nuclear'.

nuclear (and we're talking fission here rather than fusion, which is another more promising technology entirely) power plants don't spew greenhouse gases. but they've got giant problems. importing uranium across the globe and the necessary waste processing eat up tons of energy - enough to put wind and wave technologies lower than nuclear on the 'CO2 emissions' scale.

nobody has a working answer to the problem of permanent nuclear waste disposal. is it safe to store under ground or seabed for millenia? do we really want to be asking that question of future generations anyway? and at the moment, government is paying the cleanup costs, not the energy users.

the pebble bed stuff is good - but not off the ground yet - but if you're going to overcome the cooling problems and move to localised reactors anyway, why not burn biomass or gas in CHP?

in terms of climate - the biggest energy problem is not the type of energy, but our demand for it. the globe's emissions problems come not from energy generation, but from it's use - from cars, planes, homes...

karan

karan
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

need to take non-blurry pictures.

Saul Bellow. 1915 - 2005.

“Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organised power. Subject to tremedous controls. In a condition caused by mechanisation. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a s society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs…”

from Kate, beijing.

<>Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day, so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. Please do not send it back to me as I have already received it from a Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman!<>

And remember this motto to live by:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body
thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

i dreamed...

of design codes and street types swales pedestrian paths and cycleway widths. i dreamed of a man who loved me, i unaware for years. still, i could do nothing for him. i dreamed of trains and mountains and london taxis on 4th floor balconies. i dreamed of dancing schools and a man who ate pieces of his own thigh. i dreamed of meetings and tables and writing ink.

I slept soundly, and woke to a chilly room. And remembered that Karan's here; same - no, worse - than ever.

browning

O, TO be in England
Now that April 's there,
And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

high society

high society
Originally uploaded by wonderwomanyank.

moby: hotel

Where You End lyrics

Some things fall apart
Some things makes you hold
Something that you find
Are beyond your control

I love you and you're beautiful
You write your own songs
But if the right part is leaving
Turned out to be wrong

If I could kiss you now
I'd kiss you now again and again
I don't know where I begin
And where you end

Thought I fell in love the other day
With an old friend of mine
I was running kisses
Down every inch of the spine

We had the roof down
The sun came shining in
The black fact is...
that I was thinking of you

If I could kiss you now
I'd kiss you now again and again
I don't know where I begin
And where you End

I slept in the sun the other day
I thought I was fine
Everything seemed perfect
Until I had you on my mind

I tried to love you
I did all that I could
I wish that the bad now
And finally turned into good

...

shameless promo

for jeff D in tunesia. i remember the man fondly from many a conference, but reading his blog about tunesia is incredible. he's changed the way i perceive north africa!

a toast

of bond and pizza for when we're tired, of shopping for green dancing heels, storming h & m on high street ken for linen trousers, cafes and wine, leighton house's crazy turquoise tiles stuffed peacocks and art. cameron's hopeless with directions, and discovering local pubs where men wear pink polos with tennis shorts and expensive cashmere draped over the shoulders. of sitting and laughing drunk in the sun, yellow daffodils waving and josi's enormous sunglasses glinting in the sunset.

of wandering 'round the tate britian because its sunday afternoon, casual step sitting and catching a bus boat to the london eye navigating the toursits, walking arm in arm, smiling in the sun because we're together in london. giddy laughing, comfortable silences and companionship. of st james park quiet crowds and tricolored scarves waving in the wind of a gentle warm breeze.

of lingering over a glass of wine on sunday evening, of endless talk of men and love and shoes, of smiles and laughter. a toast to girlfriends.