London. The city. The icon. The hub. There's something about a city of 10 million people that simultaneously entices and repulses me. For all intensive purposes, I am a country girl. Or at least a small town girl. Even though I've been to dozens of mega-metropolises, I still approach these cosmopolitan giants with a bit of awe as well as apprehension. And so, this past week was yet another peek into the life of an ultra urbanite.
What I did in London is less interesting to me than the way that I experienced it. I presume anyone who reads this will feel the same. Nevertheless, my week in London was not just a 'holiday' as such, but involved 4 days of fairly intense training for a summer job, then a meeting for my master's research, and a job interview on top of the normal sight seeing one would expect to happen for a London first-timer. Quite naturally, it also featured me walking about London and dashing for the tube with my backpacker's pack. The inevitable hiccups in housing transfers and transportation logistics usually guarantee that I will pay my dues to the travel gods in such a way. As expected, this time was no different.
The volume of the city overwhelms me. Whatever you want to do or see you can. And in fifty different ways and locations. The parks were fairly immaculate and filled with carefree pedestrians, students, and families. The Victorian architecture impressed me...even to the last day. There is a certain pomp and regalness that seeps from the core of London. Depending on the moment, I feel either charmed or annoyed by all the fuss. Names like "Kensington" and "Chelsea" and "Westminster" and "Covent Garden" with words like 'Royal' thrown in for good measure illude to poshness, but whether the posh followed the name or the names were given to posh is unknown to me. The classic sights that I had come to know so well through photographs and movies shocked me a bit in real life. For example, Big Ben was larger in life than expected and the Tower Bridge, though boring in pictures, is actually pretty neat.
Transportation...at the risk of hyberbolizing or romanticizing city life like a provincial girl tends to do, the timing and coordination of it all can indeed be likened to a ballet, or an orchestra. Color-coded and woven together in an underground maze, the tube swallows you up and spits you out just minutes away from your ultimate destination. It's dizzying and mad and confusing and exhausting even. The map of the London Underground has itself become an icon. I found myself thinking through all the different ways one could explore such a massive area with such an effcient transportation system. I also found myself feeling like a mole tunneling through endless underground channels wishing to escape the stale air and claustrophobic trains. Would I ever live in such a big city? Could this ever feel normal to me?
The draw of the city life is the hype, the zip, the spark and the buzz of the infinite ebb and flow of humans and the sense of possibility. The rich and fast, the chic and cool, the hip and trendy. It's attractive but I'm not quite convinced.
The repulsion flows from a feeling of disconnect from the simple, the pure, the less tainted quiet of a sleepy town or country home. But I'm also reminded of feeling closed in, trapped in the sameness of a small town, the usual way, the everyone-knows-everyone routine. At times, I find strange comfort in sitting in an airport or in the middle of a foreign city where not a soul within hundreds, or perhaps, thousands of miles knows who I am or expects anything of me. But this protection wears thin and a longing to be a part of something rather than the observer of something inevitably settles in as well.
So where does that leave me? Well, back in Derry for one thing. A small town with a good vibe. Upon arriving back in Ireland, I called a taxi to take me the short distance from the bus station to my house. The driver, Hugh, remembered me from some other time he picked me up. He apparently dropped off my friends from the States that visited me two weeks ago. He asked if they had a nice time and couldn't quite remember what state I was from, but oh yes, we had talked about that. Pennsylvania, aye, that's right. I was in Allentown once, Hugh said. We then had the chat about his two daughters and a hobby of his that turned into a business. Hugh raises doves and then takes them to weddings for that moment where the bride and groom release them. He knows all 40 of his bird by name and showed me a picture slideshow of them on his GPS attached to the dashboard.
After I got out of the cab and paid, I walked to my door thinking about the differences between the London life and the Derry life. Or the Lititz life or the Jacksonville life. Or the Columbia life or a big city life in my future... It's unlikely that I'd ever catch a cab in London and hear a story like Hugh's and I'd bet all my future travels that the driver wouldn't remember my name or where I am from. I'm not sure where the next step in life will take me, but I appreciated my escape into the big city and equally my return to the small town.
1 comment:
Beautiful! I could use this in my classroom in a number of different ways: metaphor--the city was like a ballet; striking adjectives--"provincial"; and framing--coming full circle to give a sense of completeness.
It was good to hear your impressions of London. Although a traveler and English teachers, for some reason I have never had the desire to visit London. But in recent years hearing others tell about the city, I do now want to stroll through the neat gardens and experience the regalness of a monarchy-influenced country. I especially liked your reflection about how it can be stifling to live "small" and yet lonely to live "big" and therefore it takes a good bit of balancing to feel settled in either.
Good talking with you this weekend!
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