The streets are paved with gold
Dec. 3rd, 2013 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett... or at least with gingko leaves.
When I was applying to universities for undergrad, I applied to Imperial College London not because I wanted to go - I firmly intended to turn down any offer - but because my sixth form wouldn't let me apply to only three places. I hated London, I hated the idea of living in London, and I was entirely unwilling to seriously entertain the option. I felt like I had to wash for hours to scrub the Tube off me.
... six years later and in spite of myself I'm falling in love with the place. I love that people will mostly leave me alone in public; and I am exasperatedly fond of the bit where people do still ask if I need help. I love the ridiculous trains, and the trees outside the Natural History Museum wrapped in their cloaks of light, and the buskers and the art at Gloucester Road and the beautiful stations along my stretch of line.
I love my job. A lot: I think I've now stood up every single person I'm dating For Science. Of course that isn't intimately tied to London, except for how it is - how my group has parties on a boat on the Thames; how on warm days we have our windows open and so do the practice rooms at the Royal College of Music; how it's a five-minute brisk walk to South Kensington, and from there it's fifteen minutes to Paddington; and from there it's an hour on the train to Oxford. How quiet it is at two in the morning and six in the morning.
I could do without the noise and the rubbish bags piled deep on the pavements on bin day. I hate the way the buses work from the point of view of chair users.
I miss the stars.
And as far as absurdity goes? I think what I still find oddest - and perhaps most comforting - is the intimacy of living in a city; how close you get to people, and the pains you take to avoid communicating, because we are too fragile and this is the only way we can preserve the outward illusion that we are strong - and the worst thing of all/that you never confide/is that you're never quite as strong as you sound. The strange and wondrous vulnerability of people, really.
When I was applying to universities for undergrad, I applied to Imperial College London not because I wanted to go - I firmly intended to turn down any offer - but because my sixth form wouldn't let me apply to only three places. I hated London, I hated the idea of living in London, and I was entirely unwilling to seriously entertain the option. I felt like I had to wash for hours to scrub the Tube off me.
... six years later and in spite of myself I'm falling in love with the place. I love that people will mostly leave me alone in public; and I am exasperatedly fond of the bit where people do still ask if I need help. I love the ridiculous trains, and the trees outside the Natural History Museum wrapped in their cloaks of light, and the buskers and the art at Gloucester Road and the beautiful stations along my stretch of line.
I love my job. A lot: I think I've now stood up every single person I'm dating For Science. Of course that isn't intimately tied to London, except for how it is - how my group has parties on a boat on the Thames; how on warm days we have our windows open and so do the practice rooms at the Royal College of Music; how it's a five-minute brisk walk to South Kensington, and from there it's fifteen minutes to Paddington; and from there it's an hour on the train to Oxford. How quiet it is at two in the morning and six in the morning.
I could do without the noise and the rubbish bags piled deep on the pavements on bin day. I hate the way the buses work from the point of view of chair users.
I miss the stars.
And as far as absurdity goes? I think what I still find oddest - and perhaps most comforting - is the intimacy of living in a city; how close you get to people, and the pains you take to avoid communicating, because we are too fragile and this is the only way we can preserve the outward illusion that we are strong - and the worst thing of all/that you never confide/is that you're never quite as strong as you sound. The strange and wondrous vulnerability of people, really.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-12-04 10:53 am (UTC)