Where is the Poet?

Give us more thou Stone of the forests. We crave your words from soil to leaf.

Aliens, Stonehenge, and Mass Transit

Saturday, I braved the British mass transit system and traveled by myself to Stonehenge. It about 110 miles each way and takes 3 hours by train. But, you can't just take one train. I had to first walk 3 miles to the train station, then board a train to London, King's Cross station (the site of the '05 bombings vaguely on my mind) then, take the Victoria line of the underground to Oxford Circus, then take the Bakerloo line underground to London's Waterloo train station where I caught a train to Sailsbury then a bus out to Stonehenge. The National line of the underground looked on the map as though it went straight through from King's Cross to Waterloo but, of course it doesn't. Why do they make maps like that anyway?

Stonehenge rises up out of the English countryside as the bus rounds a corner from a rural two lane road. Chills flew up my spine the first time I laid eyes on the rocks. The plain outside of Sailsbury is higher elevation and a bit cooler than in the town. The views are incredible. As you stand up on the plain with the monumental rocks, wheat fields and grazing sheep surround you. It's a great place to sit on the grass and just be, for awhile.

I asked the locals where were all the crop circles, this year? Apparently the last one's were in June. It seems that the aliens are disgusted with England's performance in the World Cup and haven't been back since. If I were an alien, I would pick the Wiltshire wheat fields as a medium for my yard art. They are incredibly beautiful and serene.

The Trees are amazing! Maybe its because they're hundreds of years old, or maybe its because I haven't experienced a true forest in a long time, but I am completely memorized by the trees. They are the size of buildings. There is one tree in particular in front of Kings College, a horse-chestnut, that is so large that the branches have curled back down to the ground. It looks like arms reaching down to pick you up. Yesterday, I couldn't resist an ancient willow and climbed it up as far as I could. It practically bent down and picked me up. If there was one thing in Britain I could bring home, it would be these trees.

British Humor, Lectures, and the Nether-Eye

The Lectures have been fantastic in the tradition of the quirky imagination of the English. For example, I have heard talks on the act of walking as interpretation which included weird trees of London and graffiti as text, the nether-eye in "The Millers Tale," and the psychoanalytic process of transference in Anthony and Cleopatra (what is love anyway?). I had a flit of panic fly through my bones today in a lecture entitled "Making Sense of Poems" where it felt uncomfortably similar to Maja-Lisa'a advanced grammar class, but oh, oh, much more radical. No wonder there isn't an American equivalent to The Oxford English Grammar text.

This is a gentleman who walks the streets of Cambridge on important business. That's a jester's hat with bells on it by the way. I asked if I could take his pic and he said, "not if that's a Japanese camera" He's an advocate for the humane treatment of dolphins and whales and is upset with Japanese fisherman. He explained to me in vivid detail the execution of such beautiful creatures and I have to admit he has a point. I do own (shamefully) a Nikon, but was able to convince him that I would plug his cause on my blog if he allowed me a pic. A pang of nostalgia for Bisbee welled up in my chest when he said, "that camera's just not cosmic."

That's King's College in the background.

This is a fairy tent we found in the forest on the way back from Bryon's Pool. The forest was incredible. The trees drape themselves in ivy while their roots wind around their trunks like snake dens. I can see how living in such a forest inspires tales of fairies and gnomes.