Black Holes in London

I took Lauren to the airport yesterday. She had been visiting for a little over a week, so I have been too distracted to write anything or make a video. Starting to miss her already. Glad to say she got home at all. Her flight was canceled at the last minute due to a volcanic eruption (In Iceland, not Britain.) Ash in British airspace has shut down most outbound flights from the UK, I'm sure as well as inbound ones. We managed to get her on one of the last flights going out of the UK. Go us.

I wrote most of this on paper while sitting on the Bank of the Thames. It was a nice paper outside, so I figured I'd write something. From the moment that Lauren rushed off to make the plane I had 12 hours to faff about London until the train to Nottingham.

Twelve hours in London yielded some interesting stuff. I now know what any Londoner has known since the advent of tourism. If you aren't trying to see Parliament, stay the hell away from it. It is not a thoroughfare. It is a black hole. A black hole of tourists. I don't think it is a black hole of tourists simply as a result of Parliament's presence. No, the insufferable vortex located on Bridge St. is an independent entity. An anomaly in London town. A vacuum created maw attracting vacuous politicians who opted to build a government building and a big farkin' clock on-site. The poor tourists just get caught in it all.

When I was young I had an incident with a waffle iron that has been oft cited by my mother, supposedly for my benefit. She likes to remind me that, despite her warnings, I touched a very hot waffle iron, resulting in a burned finger. It is apparent to me that I will be touching waffle irons of some form or another as long as I live. It's just how I do. For example, I KNEW how much of a zoo it is outside of Parliament on any given day as I made my way to the Westminster Bridge. I still went there though, even though I should have known better. Except, instead of just burning a finger, I lost 3 hours of my life. According to Big Ben it was only 15 minutes, but I know what it felt like and it FELT like 3 hours. Besides, we all know that according to Trenary's Law of Clocks and Holes any clock near a hole will lose fidelity to time as we know it. Those near black holes are doubly so. Big Ben was telling me a big chronological fib. 3 hours.

I have also come to the conclusion that the best people are park people. Well, most park people. Not the guy in the trench coat that wears sunglasses and hangs around playgrounds. He's bad park people. But park people in general are great. Yesterday, for about an hour, I was a park person. Park people are great because they demonstrate the need for outdoor recreational space in an urban setting. And they do it with a quasi sense of community. In my case today, I was one of a seas of people that littered the grass in St. James park, just lounging for the sake of lounging. We were a community that didn't overtly interact. We just loafed together, like bread in an aisle of the supermarket that is St. James Park. This is just one example. You can look about and find others. Think of the speed chess community in Central Park. Consider strangers that meet in Rock Creek Park and let their dogs/children play together. I think there's something about outdoor recreational space that makes people more sociable and overall nicer than normal.

On the other hand, there's something about sitting inside, hunched over a computer and typing on message boards that turns people into hate-filled trolls that expectorate their ire all over the internet community. An inverse relationship between Park People and Trolls, methinks.

In a while I'll finish this in video format. I still have to take you all through my experience in the London Tate museum.

In the words of Signor Martinez: Via... con dios.

Love,

Jonathan "Park Person Troll Hunter" Trenary

To War.