London: [people] * places * things

One of the best parts of traveling is the meeting of new people.

Here are just three examples from this trip to London:

When I asked Sam if I was in the right place he put his arms on my shoulders and called me "love," which confirmed my suspicion that all British people speak like my friend Sally Hull. 

Sam, of course, was the gregarious guide of the walking tour we took on Wednesday night. 

The event was touted as a ghost tour, and was free with our Big Bus tickets.*  The tour actually had very little to do with ghosts and a lot more to do with drinking and shmoozing at the Sherlocke Holmes Pub. After we pounded our ales, Sam led us about casually "I hate big groups of people," he said with a straight face, "so try not to stand like we're a big group of people." At every monument or "haunted" establishment that we hit Sam demonstrated his ability to tie sex into almost anything. He was hilarious and high energy, often having to pause and draw a deep breath after spouting off paragraphs of information. His guidance was spiked equally with jokes at the expense of British history and fond memories of his own grandmother. I was sad to leave him.

Alison Wilkie is a ferociously hip screenwriter who I met in the staff room at St. Mungos. When she isn't writing  scripts she is running a  creative writing group for homeless people. She is also both an actress and an established stand up comedian. When she found out that I also split my time between comedy and working for the homeless, she put her arms around me and we both laughed like children. 

Alison's story is crazy, she's done everything from working as a chicken keeper in Bethlehem to performing as a dancing girl in Milan.  She has also been street-homeless in London. Now she uses both her understanding of homeless life and her artistic talents to help others unlock their own experiences. 

The 62 year old man from forty minutes outside of London who was my seat mate on the plane ride home is named John. He has a sister who lives in Massachusetts, and he has only recently begun flying internationally to see her. He's been all over New England. "Naught teew diffehrent, then." His accent was so foreign to me that sometimes I had to ask him to repeat things, and sometimes I just nodded and smiled and he would laugh, knowing I hadn't understood him through his countryside dialect.

He was wearing bright socks  that didn't match his shirt or shorts, the way my grandpa Ben does. 

His were lime green and lemon.

 "I have 20 more pairs in my suitcase," he explained. "People say I'm too old and I think, 'too old for what? For fun?'" 

 He'd been trying to find a pair of American flag socks, but couldn't.

 "I wanted to wear one American and one British one for the fourth of July!" he smiled. "One year we went out, and we were in Maine and I put up the American flag on one side and the British flag on the other. People looked, but they know it's a laugh. It's all just a laugh."

Then we traded trivia about wars. You know, like people do.

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*The only reason, I believe, John agreed to accompany me on something called "Ghosts By Gaslight"**
**Despite the distinct lack of ghosts there WAS a gaslight on this tour.

Behind the Clouds

I crammed myself into the back of the Number One today, and checked my watch without much hope of good news. Just as I suspected time had not, in fact, started running backwards and I was going to be late to my CPR recertification class.

I reached into my bag to pull out my ipod and found that I had left it along with my cell phone on my bedside table. Sighing, I continued rummaging and came up with some reading material at the bottom of the bag: a folded up bulletin from the 8pm Mass at St. Clem's last night. Father Peter is usually a pretty engaging story teller, so I dug in, searching for his column.

"I know you," the man jammed into the seat next to me said. "You work at McInnis House."

I recognized his face, but not the name he gave me, and we chatted a bit as we rode.
 He's doing well, he reported, still in a treatment program, and still sober as a result.  "I gained some weight," he pointed out, "but it's better than the lifestyle I was living."  He  really feels like he's been successful in restarting his life. He asked me to say hello to "everyone over there" from him.

We fell into a comfortable silence. I finished reading Father Peter's column. I looked up and saw that we had a bunch of Mass Ave left to cover.

"I wish it were more sunny out," I remarked.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't know why I said it. I actually don't mind cloudy days at all. In retrospect, had it been any more sunny out I also would have been upset about leaving my sunglasses on the kitchen counter.

He responded sincerely, "The sun is out, you know." And he smiled.

I know it looks like some Chicken Soup for the Sick Sad Soul written out here, but there was nothing trite about the way he said it. Instead, it was the truest thing I had heard all day.
Why had my go - to space filler in conversation been a complaint anyway?
A soft complaint, but a complaint nonetheless. How often do I do that and not even notice?

"You know the serenity prayer, right?" he asked me.  I said I did, but when he paused and I didn't recite it, he recited it instead. We both smiled.  He told me to take that thought with me for when my day wasn't going the way I wanted.

"You can restart your day whenever you want," he pointed out.

And I guess, of all people I ran into today, he would know.

Just keep the chickens outside the tent

 This will post tomorrow since I won't get the internet.


The other day there was a snake behind my tent. It was curling itself through the barbed wire fence, which is covered on top by laundry the family members have laid out to dry in the unforgiving sunlight. Some of the local boys started poking me as I left my tent and tried to walk along the small path to the pharmacy/ER tent. "Look! Look! Snake!" I looked and smiled. "Nice!"

They laughed, thinking I didn't understand them or else I would have jumped. "No! SNAKE!"

I stopped and smiled again. "I know," I told them in Creole, "it's ok. I like it."

"You LIKE snake?" This stopped them.

In broken Creole I tried to explain that when I was a teacher we had a pet snake in the classroom. 

They were astonished.

A few minutes later, I had returned to my tent with the supplies I had needed and was organizing my tiny nursing station. The tent was loud, but all the patients were stable. I had time to regroup. Then a group of young people approached me with a translator. They wanted to know more about the snake. 

Except they didn't know the word "snake." They tried to ask about "serpants," but kept saying "supper," prompting me to mime eating which made them crazy. "In America you eat supper?" I kept hearing them ask and I kept saying saying "yes, yes!" They were howling and clutching their stomachs. 

 Finally one drew me a picture. 

"Oh! A snake!" I said, and did my best snake impression. 

Forget it. After that I couldn't talk to them for two seconds without them asking me for another snake impression. We spent the rest of the afternoon dancing and doing snake impressions.

The boy from outside had said  to me, "All Haitians are afraid of snakes. Why aren't you?"

I answered that little snakes are fine but I am worried by big snakes.

"Like anacondas?" 

"Yeah. Anacondas." 

And I couldn't find the words in french or creole to explain that for an anaconda I'd be a great appetizer. I should work on that before I leave.

Octopus Man

Today I decided to do some cleaning. I tackled my room and the kitchen first. It's gorgeous out today in Boston, so my cleaning gear amounted to little besides a pair of shorts and my bikini top. After all, I'm home alone.

I took several loads of trash and recycling out to the side yard, singing as I did. But on the last trip as I reached back for the door handle it stuck. I had hit the lock. I was locked out.

I walked to the front yard and tried the front door. No luck. I rang Apartment One because all three apartments are connected through the back hallway. Jay and Mona were both at work.

I circled the house searching for a foot hold knowing that Jay would forgive me if I climbed into a window. Nothing.

I gave up on getting back in since it was so gorgeous out anyway. Plus, I was starving, and now I had a perfect excuse for giving up productivity. I could sit, drinking an ice coffee and eating an avocado and bacon sandwich from Java Jo's at least until someone came home from work to let me in.
I checked my pockets and sighed. No money, obviously. Who brings their wallet to take out the trash?

I started to laugh because from now on, I probably would.

"Hey!" called out a group of men walking towards me. I recognized at least two of them as the guys who live next door, they often sit on the front porch smoking cigarettes and playing guitar late into the evening.

As we exchanged "what's up?s" I tried to look as though I usually hang out in a bathing suit on the sidewalk. Then I gave up. "Hey guys, I'm totally locked out."

"We could try to break in.." one suggested happily. As I agreed to let them try, I got the impression that nothing could have made their day better.

"You're on the second floor, right?" asked another of them.

"They say I climb like a monkey, but I'm more like an octopus," he pronounced sincerely.
"Monkey Boy!" one of them shouted gleefully. Having never watched an Octopus climb anything, I just smiled and told him I believed him. He grinned and followed me to my back yard.

As I watched incredulously he shimmied up to Jay's back porch and then kept going til he reached mine.

He entered the apartment and came down the back stairs. He opened the door with a wide smile, lit cigarette still in hand, not even a bit sweaty or out of breath.

He was right. He was way more like an octopus.

made of bees

I was going through files on my phone and came across a video clip from last spring, or maybe even the spring before, and it reminded me to tell you this anecdote.

I didn't notice anything strange on my way down the street, but about halfway to the corner I saw them. Blocking a section of the street was a swarm of bees. As suddenly as I saw them, I began to hear them. The buzz was phenomenal, otherworldly, and terrifying.

I've hated bees since I was a kid. I got stung on my hand, which swelled up like a balloon rendering it useless for a week. One doctor guessed I was allergic to bees. It made sense since my Mom is allergic to bees, but it's not like I had an anaphylactic reaction. Still, growing up the sound of even one bee humming induced a lot of anxiety.

As I continued my approach I saw that the swarm, although it appeared chaotic, was self contained to the middle of the street. The sidewalk was a safe zone. I inched past.

There was a man standing nearby and watching. He turned to me. "It's incredible, isn't it?"

I hadn't looked very closely, but now I did. "I guess it is," I said, "but so many bees is a bit scary."

He smiled, "there's no way they'll hurt you. They're looking for a new queen. Migrating. they are all very, very focused. You see that branch, covered in bees?"

The branch, black against the sky was animated with crawling bodies.

"That's the site of their new hive. These guys are all communicating with each other about it. Eventually, everyone will settle in. By night time. You watch."

I stood, fascinated, unable to turn away as the black cloud moved up and down in the air, undulating but never defying its seemingly arbitrary boundaries. The swarm was about six feet in length, and began only a few feet up from the pavement, and extended up to the top of the branch. It was impossible to tell how many bees there were.

The man continued to tell me about the bees. He had grown up, the son of a beekeeper, on a farm. He explained that what we were witnessing is an anomaly, and that we were really lucky to be watching. It also meant it would be a good year for local honey.

Then he did something I never expected. He grabbed my arm and said, "come on, walk through them with me. It's perfectly safe." I stared at him blankly. "They won't even know we're here," he added. I nodded and took a breath. If this was a rare thing to witness, I was going to witness it as closely as possible.

With his hand gripping my wrist he walked me right into the middle of the swarm. He continued to talk about the bees. The noise was unbelievable, but even more unbelievable was that, as we stood there bees flew around us in every direction, but never paid us any attention. Bees flew past my head, right by my bare arms, and dodged in between the man and me, but never hit or stung us. I looked straight up and saw the blue sky shaded by their wings, a million black ovals against the sunlight coming through the trees.

We stayed.

Eventually I had to leave to catch my train. But before I did I thanked the stranger profusely.
I'm not afraid of bees anymore.

Coffee Shop

Last night Johnny, Laura and I were all home at the same time because I found out my student's improv show is next weekend. This almost never happens so to celebrate we walked to Java Jo's . That morning I had stopped there for breakfast (as usual on days when I teach) and to pick up a bagged lunch to bring to school with me. I noticed that the soup of the day was "Italian Wedding," and knew without the slightest hesitation that I would probably be back for dinner. So I was. This day has been brought to you by Java Jo.

As we sat at the table and talked it became clear that the large Latino man sitting nearby was not just talking on his cell phone. He was free styling in a low monotone. The free styling went on for about twenty minutes at a time, would be punctuated by something along the lines of, "please make them play that, homey, don't make me beg," and would begin again.

At first some of it was actually kind of good. Nothing like the stuff we used to "kick," at McClellan house parties, but hey, not everyone can be us, right?* The longer this went on the more colorful the language became and the less creative the content. Also, the volume increased and the flow got less cohesive. So we kept overhearing things such as, "Eff this, eff that, eff my effing gat. I'm not effing kidding." And "eff eff eff my n***** , pull that effing trigger." And "I'm hungry. Where's the food at? Do you have enough food to feed me? Do you have enough food to feed my crew? You don't have enough food to feed my team. You don't have enough food to feed this country. You don't have food to feed this town**. This town is going up."

Jen the Coffee House Girl had to go tell him to quiet down twice and eventually escorted him out. When he began walking I saw that he was drunk. I wondered if anyone was actually on the other end of his phone. Because sometimes in the past I too have pretended to be on my phone for various reasons. Just never that long.


* I am so sorry.
**At which point Laura and I made eye contact and I said, "a town is smaller than the country, he should have switched those," and Laura replied "you should go tell him that."