I created this blog so that I could relay all of the positive experiences I have in the course of a study abroad experience. Like all things in life, I find how futile an effort it can prove to make attempts at controlling impressions. With that comes the overwhelming pressure to tell the truth as one sees it.
While I find many aspects of London endear me to the culture, others, perhaps more strongly so, repulse me from it. I'm beginning to find that the somewhat suppressed stereo-type I held regarding British society as stuffy or rude has come up to the surface where it now haunts me in a waking reality.
This past Friday, I was coming back from the cinema, having watched Tangled with my friend, when I entered my 'living accommodation,' otherwise considered 'home,' to be interrogated by the front desk personnel. He plainly asked me my name, whether I was American, what floor I lived on and if I had any American friends. Well yeah, mate, I've got loads of American friends- I'm from there. It took him a while to get to the point, though he never divulged the true source of his interest. What I took from it is there's an American on the 16th floor with a problem, as in stirring up trouble, and I'm already suspect for sharing the nationality. After discovering there's no possible way I could be involved, he said nothing in kind to an apology and I left bewildered and worried about 'what the hell's going on on the sixteenth floor' to call for such reasonably arbitrary and relentless screening of residents?
A specific, isolated circumstance you could say- hardly the norm. But I'm not sure the norm operates in so opposite a mode, as merely forgetting your swipe card turns into a game of 21 questions before you're admitted up to your dorm. And I've been a desk receptionist, I get the drill. But at least my residents were few enough, in the couple hundreds, for my being able to say; "I know you, and that you live here- go ahead." There has to be just shy of a thousand students living in Nido Accommodations King's Cross, and maybe a dozen or two I actually know by name.
So I leave my dorm on Mondays to go to class for 6pm, and I walk to King's Cross tube station- one of the busiest stations in London, as St. Pancress International rail service neighbors it. Now I've lived in the city of Chicago for 2 1/2 years- long enough to know how foot traffic works. But here, what side of the street or stairs or tunnel to walk on creates as much ambivalence as a choice between gold or diamonds. Seriously people, I get that if you're in the habit of driving on the left you might want to walk on the left- then why are you always coming down the right side when I'm climbing up the left side- like I though you wanted! right?. It's a fact of nature most people are dominant in their right, and perhaps that translates to a tendency to walk to the right of passersby. Yet, the British are horribly conflicted by this habitual-physiological conundrum that they just sway to and fro as they please without regard for their fellow travelers- and let me tell you, a few weeks of tube-dependent travel and this no longer becomes a petty issue but a colossal force of frustration.
When there's too many people, how do you organize them, who will organize them, where will they go, how will they affect one another...
6:02pm: I'm already a tad late for my favorite class, Gothic Fiction, and I realize I don't have one of my many cards of identification, my university ID. I go to the attendant, "Hey look, I go to school here, I gotta get to class in minus 2 minutes- think you can let me in?" First he asks for my username. Ok, I can do that. Then my name for verification, where I'm from, what I'm studying, and as if that's not enough verification- I have to fill out a day pass!...you know just in case hall patrol's going to pull me over for a random screening. Did I mention it's 6pm and I have one class to attend. But no, no question about it, I need a day pass.
Class went well, we talked about Poe and The Fall of the House of Usher, a fabulous piece of gothic fiction. After class, I met my roommate at the grocery store to get some items to cook dinner. It was of course very busy, and understaffed so we went to the self-checkout like many of the other customers. It wasn't until I was having trouble myself with the automated machine that I noticed everyone was, and the line was wrapping around the aisle. So, an employee was going around assisting people with checking "themselves" out- a little tinge of irony in that ain't there? Then- I pay by credit card, and of course she checks to see my ID. If it isn't enough that my picture, as well as my name, appears on both my credit card and my license, she's obsessed about the signature. I have to tell her- hey, that signature on my license is from when I was sixteen, my John Hancock has changed just a bit in five years. Oh, and by the way- there's my FACE saying it's me.
I'm sorry this is such a rant for my recurring and recent readers, and mind you these anecdotes are but a sample of a plentitude of like situations contributing to this crack in my cultural composure. I just need to convey to some level of common understanding the frustration and furry I've tolerated in the most mundane circumstances by fact of living in the city of London, that's too large and anonymous for its own good. Sometimes I feel like Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion; if you don't get the reference, watch the movie- a good psychological thriller by Polanski.
The paradox of the big city goes: the more people, the more anonymous life is. Looking out at the scene from within, I begin to feel my smallness, and I want to live outward, open, and large.
Though I refuse to believe London is the drone of indifference it might seem at times. Tomorrow I'm heading to The Poetry Café, headquarters of the London Poetry society, for some reading and to imbibe in the artist's verse, as well as the beautiful scenery of Covent Garden. Perhaps finding some commonality amidst the masses will give them a more human, rather than machine-like, characterization. After all, I too am a part of that mass that perhaps affects others in the same way it has me.
This weekend it's Paris- and I think I'm ready to take on the city with some learned city grit and broken French. Then maybe time for a country side retreat, more mountains than people who form mountain-like obstacles to who knows what.
Be back soon. Cheers.
No comments:
Post a Comment