Liberty in the UK

OOOO0000ooooo you thought I was going to say anarchy. they have that too.
But the Liberty I speak of is the most heavenly department store I have ever had the pleasure of entering. Bar none.

It is basically a haven of all things beautiful. Fabric. Yarn. Haberdashery. Christmasy things. Furniture. Other homey things. Handbags. Shoes. Paper. Things to color the paper with.

I mean, there is an entire hall (and i say hall in the sense of Vikings-could-have-lunch-here) devoted to scarves.

Go there. I will say no more, except to give you photos. I took only one photo inside, and felt like I was violating a sacred contract.

And the area outside is incredibly cute, and incredibly expensive. It reeeeeeks of money. And at that point, I had a small revelation.

I am not the judge of rich people. I know I'm comparatively rich. But there is something in me that dislikes the facade of perfection there, and elsewhere. It just doesn't jive with me. I like conflict. Personality. Idiosyncracy, a little whiff of anarchy. I thrive on that. Liberty I somewhat exempt from this, because it has oodles of personality and a smidge of dark whimsicalness.

But it's a free market world in London, and if them folks want to buy all that stuff up, I won't stop them. Their life.

And I also encountered a zombie pub crawl. And a troop of about ten men dressed as superheroes. (too much spandex, not enough muscle.)All in Oxford Circus. An apt name. The couple, when I asked for their photo, I couldn't understand a word and was trying to deceipher whether they'd said yes or no....oh WAIT, you are beyond smashed, you're friendly, and YOU WON'T REMEMBER A THING. *snappity snap*
in retrospect, maybe they weren't a couple....

lalalallalaaa
Then to Green Park, and more lessons in capitalism.
In Green Park, there are a bunch of green-and-white striped lawn chairs as you come out of the tube stop. Being tired, I sat down. I was just reflecting on how nice it was of whoever to put those chairs there, when I and two other travellers were informed by a snarky little man in a neon vest that the chairs were not free, they were 50 p.

FAIL. Not on my part. Oh no. An epic, epic fail on the part of the lawn-chair schemer. For all around me, under the cozy gray sky and the towering autumn-clad trees, through all of Green Park, were benches and lovely green grass. And no smirky people charging 50 p.

KEEP YO LAWN CHAIR, BUCKO. Schemes like that only work if I have no other option, and praises be, you haven't monopolized the snuggly vegetation and park benches.

I made some dry, nondescript reply and moved off to freer butt-resting spots.
The other two people did the same. There was no one else sitting.

(i'm sure he probably makes money when the park is more crowded and the weather's warm, but at that moment, it was ludicrous. Laughable. silly.)

Ennyhow. I'm tired. Sometimes I want to be out in this kind of weather, but sometimes all I want is my screen, a book, a project, and the window.

OH HA. the window. Last thing. I was wondering lately why I could hear all the street sounds so crystal clear. Then one day I glanced up at the top of the window frame. There is a clean gap, big enough for me to stick my hand in, between the edge of the frame at the top, and the actual structure of the wall. There is a hole in the wall. I never.

I want soup.
-Lu

alert: pretentiousness awaits in this post.

There is so much whining in the world, guys. So much. It frustrates me. It is such an utter waste of breath, time, life, opportunity.
SO. at the risk of becoming a whiner about whining (INCEPTION JOKE HERE) (I HAVEN'T SEEN INCEPTION. YES I AM A SORT OF NORMAL HUMAN.)
i give you the photo that absolutely, completely, perfectly sums up my reaction to said whinging and whining.

Good night.
-Lu

it is a SMALL WORLD. and i like libraries.

I am sitting at the moment in the lobby of The British Library, parasitically using the internet. Well, not really.

Also, maybe this happens to other people all the time, but it had never happened to me before. I posted this photo I took in Camden Town on Saturday on Tumblr. I don't usually put the place and day taken, but I did.

And in all the spiderwebbyness of the internets, the girl in the picture found and reblogged it. funny.

anyway. This place is quietly intelligent, worldly-in-a-good way. The tagline is "The world's knowledge" and I guess that's about the best way to sum it up. However, I don't have any proof of my address, so I don't know if I can be a member here. Oh well. Great place for studying.

I promised myself I would not have anything so common as Starbucks in London. But then i was ridiculously thirsty, and I had a vision of a venti chai frappucino made with half-and-half and extra chai and espresso, and brain simultaneously recalled that there was a Starbucks down the street and that was the end of that resolution. They also have these little lollies that I used to beg for every time Mom took us into Starbucks, but I've not seen them in American Starbucks anymore. and then I sat on the curb and drank it and watched Oxford Circus rumble on.

On Friday I went to Regent's Park. At dusk, with the leaves just starting to fall and the gardens still in bloom, I thought I'd walked into an enchanted kingdom or something. The photos won't do it justice, but they're better than nothing.

ah it relaxes me simply to think of it.

I AM GOING TO CATCH UP. i promise.

But for now, here is a little thingie i wrote in Journalism class this afternoon. It is probably no good as a news story, but it's not being graded, it's funny, and she was NOT CLEAR on what we were supposed to be writing. And I had half an hour.

anyway. whining over.
Movie Review into News Story. -
Found in The Daily Flare, a Martian tabloid

Shortly after a catastrophic Earthling wedding, which ended with the groom
killing himself and the depressed bride estranging her entire family,the
rogue planet Melancholia collided with Earth, resulting in the end of that
planet.

The bride had had an elaborate wedding planned by her siblings, though
she was deeply depressed and not interested in worldly fanfare. To make
matters worse, her estranged parents fell out further during the event,
resulting in unhappiness all around. Some have even speculated that the
anger and ill-will generated by the wedding attracted the attention of the
sentient Melancholia, who decided to end the wedding and the Earthling
world.

Though we mourn the end of that unhappy family and the rest of the
human race, a more pressing concern is the abundant space debris
resulting from the collision, which poses a terrible threat to the
inhabitants of Mars. Regardless of the cause,the debris of Earth will
continue to be a problem requiring the most creative Martian solutions. We
suggest contacting your local community leaders with ideas, as the issue is
urgent.

(I made up the part about the Martians, the sentient planet, and the
debris. The movie apparently involved little more than a terrible wedding
and the end of the world. The movie was Melancholia.)

yes. I have break from LCF classes for two weeks. I intend to chill, sleep, explore, make things, and BLOG. there is half a post on regent's park waiting for pictures that will make the pretty-loving part of your brains verrrry happy. so. let me go finish my homeworks SINCE IT'S 4:03. (parents, I promise I've only stayed up like this once, no twice, since I left. I'm normally painfully responsible, of course...)
grood night.
-Lu

much blogging.

There is so much to catch up on i don't even know where to start......since i last blogged....Tate Britain, worldwide squees, Museum of London, Lucie finds the Tardis, Regent's Park, Camden Town, night so late it's early, and as previously stated, sore muscles.

Well. Eat an elephant one bite at a time. Let us first betake ourselves to the beautiful Tate Britain.
It is on the banks of the Thames, and there are charming benches set on brick pilings so you can see the water as you sit, and not just a brick wall. Being me, I climbed onto the wall instead of the bench. Here's me not falling in the Thames.

yes yes ok.

now the inside. This is all British artsies. I tell you, the London, it has the stellar museums. stellar I say.

I believe this was called "Athlete Wrestling with a Serpent"

And this piece of art will forever remind me of Anne of Green Gables, and the fateful reenactment of Ophelia's death, wherein people nearly drown. So, I giggled when we got to this one, because it's a hilarious part in the book, and everybody looked at me funny.....smatter, people, didn't you have a childhood.....

for some reason, when i looked at this one, it seemed the most perfect pictorial representation of the word "pride" i had ever seen.

And some Bacon. Weird stuff.

Ah, this one. By John Singer Sargent. It was in a lovely book I had as a kid, no idea where it went. Regardless, I spent hours poring happily over that book, and immediately on seeing this it brought childhood and security and happily amusing myself for hours back. And it's pretty.

aha then there was an area where you could make a drawing and hang it up. An unknown stranger contributed the beautiful man-in-hat piece, and I did the little mermaid gem. And yes, I hung them up.

This one really struck me to the point that if I were filthy rich, I would have tried to buy it. It's basically The Thinker, threatened by the bayonets of fascism. Painted around WWII, I believe.

And to end, I think this chandelier was my favorite. Skinny Bunny Rabbit was cool too.

my. legs. hurt. (and my butt.) last 3 days: walk walk walk SPEED-WALK YOU'RE LATE walk walk walk walkwalkwalk dance for four hours, walk walk walk walk NAP.