Digest #10: Tottenham is not an old-timey word for prostitute, or: Nothing is as good an investment as free postcards that you'll never end up sending

London is a remarkably grey and never feels quite clean. There's always a gritty feeling in the air. Grit is everywhere and you don't realize quite how gritty a place it is until you blow black out of your nose and scrub grey off of your face. Initially you believe that you're diseased, that your body is invaded by some unseen filth. You think you're alone in this, but then come to realize that everyone breathes this same air and has the same bodily functions. Everyone comprising this same throng of urban dwellers. The grit and the grime can serve a function besides selling tissues and face scrub. Because of the grit and the dirt and the dust you always know when the radiators have turned back on because of the smell of burning detritus from previous inhabitants, whether they be bourgeois or their obnoxious children. Don't lose your sense of smell if you can avoid it. Sometimes you think you see the flame on the gas stove, but can't. You'll begin to feel faint as there is no flame to consume the natural gas and then realize that you hadn't pushed the ignition in the first place (there's a first time for everything so they say). Take my advice though: Don't lose you sense of smell if you can avoid it. You can appreciate the smell of exhaust of the bus as it passes you, ignoring your hailing hand and blue oyster card flag. Or the cool air pushed by the train and the frightening feeling of almost getting sucked into the slipstream of the Tube as you stand too near in an attempt to grab a seat before someone jumping the queue gets to it first. They all sit the same: Smugly with their face in one of the free papers that are handed out and their iPod earplugs planted firmly within their ears. It's all grey and dirty and habitual, almost living in a slow motion scene in a film. It is comforting though like knowing that you've avoided getting hit by a double decker bus once again. London is perhaps the only place I've ever felt that I owed absolutely nothing to anybody. I can ignore the buskers next to the escalators in Euston station impersonating Elvis; or the woman handing me an intentionally misspelled note stating that her baby needs food while at the same time wearing brand new Reeboks and sipping a smoothie. It is not a loss of sympathy but more a gaining of savvy. Like the financial implications of going to an off license and drinking before going to a pub to avoid paying for a pint (though I must admit that beer out of a can only begins to taste good after the second; but cheap £4 wine does the trick better (but only if I can find a corkscrew)). Apparently Gin & Tonics date you, that is according to Chiara. There are no protests this week, I'm sure to the chagrin of some and there was no soup today at Greens & Beans (to the chagrin of myself). I am a creature of habit it seems, but not unlike all of those Londoners around me. Like the patrons of either the Northern or Victoria lines who despite knowing that the escalator going down was still out of service, stood on the stairs as though they could command the own habits to make the stairs carry them down. They stand there unmoving and effectively clog the narrow staircase. An objective viewer might marvel that we're either civilized that we don't kill one another at the slightest annoyance or that we're remarkably well trained. I would opt to say that we are remarkably well trained, even I who would rather be blind to most things around me can acknowledge this (it is too romantic a notion to say that we're wholly civilized). I did not and could not cry on the Tube or the bus or the walk home. I saw the reflection of my too red cheeks and pale skin in the dual windows of the Piccadilly line car, thinking ruefully that I either looked like a prostitute from the 19th century or that I might have been beautiful had I been born with dark hair and dark eyes. Oh well. I do not scream when I want to, which has become more and more frequent as time has progressed since my arrival. I do not commit acts of violence out of rage. I cannot look at pansies the same way again since learning about the Pansy Project at the opening of the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival the evening before. Knowing that pansies for some have come to represent a violent act perpetrated against them. People hope and that is a good and probably a noble thing. Any bit of color here is most likely a good and noble thing. The sky here rarely reflects this sentiment. But-at the very least- it didn't rain much at all today. Perhaps the clouds don't feel much up to raining, but sitting idly and sighing. Such a bizarre place. I would hate it if I didn't love it so.